The graded-index (GI) plastic optical fiber (POF) is needed for high-speed data communication in the local area netwroks, because of the large diameter of the core (such as 0.5-1 mm) of GI POF offers the advantage in the coupling and bandwidth. The POF allows the use of inexpensive injection-molded polymer connectors, which decrease dramatically the total cost of the system. Generally, the GI POF is fabricated by heat drawing of GI preform. In this paper, a "no initiator method"~(1), which based on the principle of interfacial-gel polymerization~(2), was proposed for fabrication of the GI preform. Methyl methacrylate (MMA) was selected as the basic material for POF and bromobenzene (BB) with higher refractive index (n=1.56) was used as dopant for forming GI preform. Discussions were also given regarding to the influences of molecular weight of PMMA and BB content on the fiber drawing performance. The experimental result showed that the physical performance of POF was remarkably affected by both the molecular weight of preform and BB content contained in the preform.
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