Fabrication of a rugged polymer-coated silver hollow fiber with a vitreous film for the infrared

摘要

A rugged hollow fiber is fabricated by liquid-phase coating techniques. A silica glass capillary is used as the substrate and a vitreous film is firstly coated on the inner surface of the capillary to protect the glass tube from moisture. This protective coating keeps the thin-wall glass tube away from damage due to the following silver plating process. On the protective coating, a silver film is deposited by the conventional mirror plating technique. Subsequently, a polymer film is coated on the silver film to reduce transmission loss by employing interference effect of the polymer film. Fabrication processes and transmission properties of the rugged polymer-coated silver hollow fiber were discussed. The loss for the 700-μm-bore size, 1-m-length hollow fiber was 2 dB under straight configuration, and 3.5 dB under the configuration of a 270 degree bending with a 15-mm bending radius at the wavelength of 2.94 μm.