Silicone Optical Fiber Coating

Shin-Etsu offer a range of sil­i­cone mate­ri­als suit­able for opti­cal fiber coat­ing. The fiber coat­ing appli­ca­tion can be bro­ken down into two cat­e­gories, the “pri­ma­ry coat­ing” through which the light or data must pass and the “buffer coat­ing” whose opti­cal prop­er­ties must be dif­fer­ent than the pri­ma­ry coating.

Shin-Etsu offer a range of sil­i­cone mate­ri­als suit­able for opti­cal fiber coating.

Depend­ing on the equip­ment and method of poly­mer­iza­tion (UV Cure of Heat Cure), dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of prod­ucts are avail­able. Refer to the fig­ure below.

Primary Coating Material

For the pri­ma­ry coat­ing, there is one heat-cure prod­uct (OF-182), and two UV-cure prod­ucts (OF-211 and OF-212). These prod­ucts exhib­it spe­cif­ic opti­cal prop­er­ties as the light (data) trav­els through this lay­er. For these appli­ca­tions a refrac­tive index of 1.49 — 1.52 is required and all these prod­ucts have refrac­tive indices that fall in this range.

Silicone Optical Fiber Coating

Buffer Coating Material

The buffer coat­ing mate­r­i­al is used to keep the light (data) with­in the fiber core and thus requires a mate­r­i­al with a much low­er refrac­tive index, typ­i­cal­ly in the 1.41 — 1.44 range. For this appli­ca­tion, there are two heat cure prod­ucts (OF-101 and OF-180) and two UV-cure prod­ucts (OF-207 and OF-208).

These mate­ri­als are suit­able for nor­mal tele­con fibers coat­ed with 400µm — 500µm thick­ness­es at line speeds of 100 to 500 m/min.

For more infor­ma­tion on these or oth­er prod­ucts, please vis­it us or con­tact us for more details.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

One thought on “Silicone Optical Fiber Coating

  1. I wan­na know more about OF-211 and OF-212 of Shin-Etsu Sil­i­cone Opti­cal Fiber Coating.

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