Graded-index optical fibers of methyl methacrylate-vinyl benzoate copolymer with low loss and high bandwidth

The interfacial-gel copolymerization of 3/1, or 4/1 (wt/wt) methyl methacrylate-vinyl benzoate monomer mixture followed by heat drawing results in graded-index plastic optical fibers with attenuation loss of 212 and 134 dB/km at 652 nm, respectively, and with bandwidths of 170 and 260 MHz km, respectively, in comparison with 6 MHz km of the current step-index plastic optical fiber. Now, it has been confirmed experimentally that graded-index fibers are tremendously superior to step-index fibers for data-carrying capacity, while attenuation losses of both fibers are comparable.