New Light-Focusing Fibers Made by a Continuous Process

A new continuous manufacturing process for light-focusing glass fibers has been developed using fast ion-exchange in a special double crucible. By use of this new process, new low-loss optical fibers with a transmission loss of 20 dB/km at wavelengths between 0.81 μm and 0.85 μm and a transmission capacity of more than a few Gbit/sec for 1 km were fabricated from low-loss bulk glass prepared by an improved raw powder refinement technique and by clean melting.