Plastic Optical Fiber
                     Plastic Optical Fiber
Traditional optical glass fibers are terrible in flexibility when their diameters aren't small enough. 
Further, they may be extraordinarily fragile and are apt to be damaged with the aid of using impact. 
Furthermore, they may be heavy, due to the fact their precise gravity is relatively large. In addition, the 
optical fibers themselves in addition to their connectors are expensive. Due to those drawbacks, try has 
been made to replace glass materials with plastic materials.
Plastic optical fiber (POF) (or Polymer optical fibre) is an optical fiber this is created from polymer. 
Similar to glass optical fiber, POF transmits light (for illumination or data) via the center of the fiber. Its 
leader benefit over the glass product, different issue being equal, is its robustness below bending and 
stretching.
Core 96%, 1.zero mm Plastic Optical Fiber, (POF), usually makes use of PMMA (acrylic), a general-cause 
resin because the center material, and fluorinated polymers for the cladding material. The optical 
wavelength of this fiber is 650nm, well suited with preferred off the shelf components.
In large-diameter fibers, ninety six percentage of the cross-phase is the center that helps the 
transmission of light. Although quartz fiber is broadly used for infrastructures, POF has been referred to 
as the "consumer" optical fiber. This is because of the truth that expenses of POF, related optical links, 
connectors and set up expenses are low.
The blessings with plastic substances are numerous. For instance, the ensuing optical fibers are light, 
hard and bendy in order that their diameters and numerical apertures may be made large. Further, for 
instance, their dealing with is simple and may be effectively linked to light emitting and/or accepting 
elements. In general, a plastic optical fiber contains a center product of a plastic cloth having a bigger 
refractive index and a very good optical transmission and a cladding product of a plastic cloth having a 
smaller refractive index and a excessive transparency. In this structure, light is transmitted via way of 
means of mirrored image on the interface among the coreand the cladding.
Plastic optical fibers strongly differ from glass fibers in various 
respects:
Many POF have their loss minimal at seen wavelengths, or withinside the close to infrared (at  1.five μm, 
and a few different glasses even at a good deal longer wavelengths.
A common POF has excessive propagation losses of e.g. 50 or a hundred dB/km, while silica fibers can 
acquire some dB/m (multimode fibers) or maybe properly under 1 dB/km (single-mode fibers). 
Therefore, information transmission with POF is confined to a good deal shorter distances.
POF are usually multimode fibers with a big middle (diameter of the order of one mm) and a excessive 
numerical aperture (e.g. 0.4), as a result assisting a big variety of guided modes. This is useful while light-
emitting diodes are used as information transmitters. In the identical manner as for glass fibers, 
intermodal dispersion may be minimized via way of means of the usage of graded-index profile designs.
POF appear now no longer to be appropriate for single-mode guidance.
POF are routinely greater robust and flexible. Their multimode steering with a big middle and excessive 
NA substantially relaxes the tolerances for connectors, in order that easy plastic elements may be used 
and no state-of-the-art training is required. Due to those reasons, and now no longer inexpensive 
materials, POF permit for substantial fee financial savings in numerous applications. POF cables may be 
thinner and greater light-weight than routinely nicely included glass fiber cables.