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Blog 'fiberoptics' » Crystal Fiber Goes Distance

Research efforts aimed at reducing the power needed to send light signals over long stretches of optical fiber are focused on making fiber lines from photonic crystal, an artificial, patterned structure made from a mix of materials or a material and air.

The challenge is making photonic crystal fiber structures that are consistent enough to efficiently channel light over useful distances.

Researchers from Corning Inc. have constructed photonic crystal fiber that promises to carry light signals more efficiently than fiber lines in current use, and could prove cheaper as well.

The material could eventually be used in efficient telecommunications lines, guides for high-power laser beams, and very sensitive light detectors.

Photonic crystal uses refraction, which is responsible for the bent drinking straw illusion, to block specific wavelengths of light in order to confine light to the fiber's hollow core.

The researchers' prototype is 100 times more efficient at carrying the 1,500-nanometer-wavelength light widely used in telecommunications than previous photonic crystal prototypes. The prototype is about 25 times less efficient than today's most efficient commercial fibers, but has the potential to be about twice as efficient, according to the researchers.

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