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US 4,519,826 AGranted
Optical fibers having a fluoride glass cladding and method of making
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy
InventorDanh C. Tran
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Abstract
Fluoride glass cladded optical fibers are produced by rotationally casting a fluoride glass cladding tube, introducing core glass melt therein to form a preform, and drawing the preform into a fiber. Disclosed are methods whereby the process may be adopted to the production of multimode, stepped index profile waveguides, single mode waveguides, and waveguides having parabolic index profiles.
Claims9
A method of forming an optical fiber having a core and fluoride glass cladding comprising the steps of:
- axially rotating a vertically-disposed, thermally-conductive tubular mold containing a fluoride glass cladding melt until said cladding melt has coated essentially the entire bore surface of said mold;
- rapidly tilting the mold, while continuing to axially rotate said mold, until said mold becomes horizontally disposed;
- continuing to axially rotate said mold at least until said cladding melt has evenly coated the bore surface of said mold;
- rapidly cooling said cladding melt until its temperature is about equal to that of said mold, thus forming a cladding tube;
- introducing a glass core melt suitable for producing optical fibers into said cladding tube to form a preform;
- removing said preform from said mold;
- and
- drawing said preform to form an optical fiber.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.