Fabrication of long lengths of low-loss IR transmitting As/sub 40/S/sub (60-x)/Se/sub x/ glass fibers

Teflon clad and As/sub 40/S/sub 60/ glass clad As/sub 40/S/sub 55/Se/sub 5/ fibers transmitting in the 1-6 /spl mu/m wavelength region have been fabricated in lengths of about 50 m and with minimum losses of 0.098 and 0.65 dB/m, respectively. Short lengths of the Teflon clad fiber possessed a minimum loss of 0.047 dB/m. While current fiber losses are dominated by extrinsic scattering and absorption, the calculated theoretical minimum loss is estimated to be 3.6 dB/km at 5.3 /spl mu/m and is limited by the contribution from the weak absorption tail. Improvements in the purification and processing of the glasses into the optical fibers are required to reduce the losses further.