The General Principle of Selecting Polymers for Polymer Optical Fibre Coating

2 The General Principle of Selecting Polymers for Polymer Optical Fibre Coating 

Organic carbochain polymers and copolymers of poly-4-methylpentene-l [4] PMMA or methyl methacrylate (MMA) copolymers with other alkyl-(meth)acrylates (AMA) [1-3, 5] poly(vinyl acetate) vinyl acetate copolymer with ethylene [4, 6-8] polymers of chlorine-containing olefins [9]. 

Elementorganic polymers and copolymers copolymers of fluorinated olefins [10-21] poly(perfluoroalkyl- methacrylates) and perfluoroalkylmethacrylates copolymers [1-3, 22-34] poly(organosiloxanes) [25, 35] fluorine-containing poly(organo siloxanes) [36] fluorine-containing copolymers with side functional (hydroxy) groups [37, 38], and others [1]. 

Other polymers and copolymers which are more often used for POF core-MMA copolymer with styrene (azeotropic composition, for example, for polystyrene (PS) cover) MMA copolymers with alkylstyrenes [39, 40]. 

Selection of the coating polymer (Table 8.1) is often dictated by conditions of future application of POF and the core material itself [3]. The first polymer which was used as cover a POF for a PS core was PMMA. Optical fibres from this polymer are widely used. It is easily produced and processed numerical aperture (NA) = 0.56. It also displays rather low light losses at A. = 670 nm ( 110 dB/km) [2]. However, (PMMA-PS) are not optimal due to some significant disadvantages of PS (low light resistance and light 

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