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The UV coating with the fastest photocuring rate currently available.
Release time:
2025-01-10 17:02
Drill a small hole in a wooden bucket filled with water, then shine a light onto the water’s surface from above the bucket. Next, an astonishing sight unfolds: as the water flows out of the hole, the beam of light also takes on a curved trajectory, as if the light itself has been “captured” by the flowing water.
This seemingly counterintuitive phenomenon raises a question: Shouldn't light travel in a straight line? However, science provides us with the answer. The principle behind this phenomenon is the effect of total internal reflection. When light travels from a high-density medium (such as water) into a low-density medium (such as air), if the angle of incidence exceeds a certain critical value, the light will no longer refract into the low-density medium but will instead be entirely reflected back into the high-density medium. As a result, the light appears to follow the curved path of the flowing water, giving the impression that light itself is bending as it moves through the stream.
Later, people developed a type of glass fiber that is highly transparent and as thin as a strand of hair—glass fiber. When light enters the glass fiber at an appropriate angle, it travels along the winding path of the fiber. Because this fiber can transmit light, it’s called an optical fiber.
There are two main types of optical fibers: quartz glass optical fibers and plastic optical fibers. Quartz glass optical fibers are made from highly pure quartz glass (whose primary component is SiO2). They boast excellent light transmission performance, a low refractive index, minimal signal attenuation, long transmission distances, and high data transmission rates, making them suitable for applications such as long-distance, high-speed, and high-capacity communications, broadcasting, and data transmission. However, they suffer from drawbacks including relatively high processing costs, stringent quality-control requirements, and a brittle material that is prone to breakage and difficult to repair. In stark contrast to quartz glass optical fibers, plastic optical fibers are made from polymer materials and exhibit flexibility, ease of processing, and simple connectivity. Plastic optical fibers have higher signal attenuation and slower transmission rates, making them more appropriate for short-distance communications, sensing applications, industrial automation control, and household appliances. Consequently, in the field of optical fiber communications, quartz optical fibers hold an overwhelming dominant position.
Quartz optical fibers typically consist of a five-layer structure. At the core is a fiber core made of high-refractive-index quartz, surrounded by low-refractive-index quartz to form a bare quartz fiber with a diameter of approximately 125 micrometers. The fiber is then coated with a soft outer layer, followed by a hard outer layer, and finally topped with a colored ink coating. This clearly layered structural design enables quartz optical fibers to operate reliably under a wide range of environmental conditions while ensuring high-speed, long-distance signal transmission.
The manufacturing process of quartz optical fibers is a delicate and complex procedure. First, specially doped preform quartz rods are melted in a high-temperature graphite furnace reaching up to 2,000°C. Subsequently, the molten quartz material is drawn into fine optical fibers, resulting in bare fibers that are extremely thin. However, despite their outstanding performance, these bare fibers are remarkably fragile and prone to breakage under the influence of external environmental factors. They can be subjected to scratches, dust accumulation, moisture absorption, and even oxidation—all of which can directly degrade the quality of optical signal transmission. Therefore, coating and protecting the bare fibers is an essential step in the manufacturing process.
The coating process begins immediately after the bare fiber is drawn out. First, the bare fiber is cooled to below 150℃, then it is passed vertically through a bath of UV coating liquid using an immersion coating technique, ensuring uniform application of the UV optical fiber coating. This coating not only provides protection but also enhances the durability of the optical fiber.
The double-layer coating process used in fiber-optic production consists of an inner soft coating and an outer hard coating, designed to ensure both the transmission performance and mechanical strength of the optical fiber. The inner soft coating has a low glass transition temperature (Tg) and exhibits high flexibility and low modulus over a temperature range from -60°C to 100°C. It also possesses excellent antioxidant and hydrolysis-resistant properties, as well as a relatively high refractive index, which ensures that light signals undergo total internal reflection during transmission, thereby minimizing signal loss.
The outer hard coating features a higher glass transition temperature (Tg) and modulus, providing sufficient mechanical strength and excellent resistance to aging. It exhibits strong resistance to substances such as acids, bases, solvents, and saltwater, thereby protecting the optical fiber from erosion by external environmental factors.
Early fiber-optic coatings were predominantly solvent-based and thermally curable, processes that severely limited the efficiency of fiber-optic production. With the introduction of UV-curable technologies, the curing speed was significantly enhanced, dramatically boosting the productivity of fiber-optic manufacturing. By the 1980s, the production speed of optical fibers had already exceeded 100 meters per minute. In modern times, the development of new oligomers and photoinitiators, combined with inert-gas protection during the UV-curing process, has enabled coating speeds as high as 2,500 to 3,000 meters per minute—making these materials currently the fastest-curing UV-curable formulations available. This technological breakthrough has not only improved production efficiency but also laid a solid foundation for the rapid advancement of fiber-optic communications.
The presence of optical fiber coatings enables optical fibers to maintain long-term stability and low signal-loss performance even when operating over long distances in complex environments. The importance of optical fiber coatings to the overall performance of optical fibers can be summarized as follows: Without high-quality optical fiber coatings, there would be no high-quality fiber-optic networks—and consequently, there would be no high-speed internet as we know it today.
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