Design of Low-Loss Graded-Index Plastic Optical Fiber Based on Partially Fluorinated Methacrylate Polymer

As a promising candidate of optical home network, a novel Gigabit Ethernet prepared by inexpensive partially fluorinated polymer-based graded-index plastic optical fiber (GI POF) was proposed. Poly (2,2,2-trifluoroethyl methacrylate) (P3FMA) was selected as a base material for the GI POF because of its high transparency, low material dispersion, and low cost. The transmission characteristics were investigated, and it was clarified that the newly developed GI POF has low-loss (71 dB/km at 650 nm), high humidity stability, and high-bandwidth (4.86 GHz for 50-m transmission) property. Moreover, 1.25-Gbps data transmission over 50 m was demonstrated by P3FMA-based GI POF.