{"id":7530,"date":"2015-03-02T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/blog\/?p=2489"},"modified":"2025-01-08T16:59:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T16:59:32","slug":"team-mit-creates-optical-fibre-low-cost-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/blog\/team-mit-creates-optical-fibre-low-cost-materials\/","title":{"rendered":"A Team from MIT Creates Optical Fibre From Low Cost Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The discovery opens up the possibility of integrating electronic devices (semiconductors) directly inside the fibre.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2488\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2488\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2488 size-full\" title=\"Chong Hou holds a bag containing fibres\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/team-mit-creates-optical-fibre-low-cost-materials.jpg\" alt=\"Chong Hou holds a bag containing fibres\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2488\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Graduate student and member of the research team Chong Hou holds a bag containing fibres with a diameter of 100 microns and a coating which further improves their resistance. Image author: Jose Luis Olivares\/MIT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Optical fibres are optical conductors with a capacity to transmit large amounts of data over long distances. <\/strong>To put it another way, they are long glass filaments with a diameter of just 125 microns (twice the breadth of a human hair), through which data is transmitted via pulses of light. The core is very pure, 8-micron silica. Explained crudely, the fibres are made using large glass tubes which create the fibre structure at a macroscopic scale. The tubes, known as <strong>preforms<\/strong>, are heated and stretched to obtain filaments that are subsequently coated in plastic to protect them.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2486\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2486\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2486 size-full lazyload\" title=\"Various types of low-cost silicon dioxide tubes\" data-src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/1_team-mit-creates-optical-fibre-low-cost-materials.jpg\" alt=\"Various types of low-cost silicon dioxide tubes\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 640px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 640\/427;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2486\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Various types of low-cost silicon dioxide tubes and rods in the MIT laboratory. When filling these tubes with different kinds of metals to create a preform, the researchers noted unexpected results in their experiments with aluminium. Image author: Jose Luis Olivares\/MIT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For decades, and to date, <strong>the fibre<\/strong> <strong>materials and geometry<\/strong> <strong>have been identical to those in the preform<\/strong>, but with a much smaller diameter. However, a group of researchers at MIT has discovered a surprising <strong>method for making fibres with a different composition from the original materials<\/strong>. While experimenting with how to incorporate metal threads inside the fibres, they noticed that <strong>when they tested with aluminium, the core of the fibre had transformed into very pure crystalline silicon<\/strong>, a substance which had not been in the preform.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2487\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2487\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2487 size-full lazyload\" title=\"The equipment used to draw the fibre.\" data-src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/2_team-mit-creates-optical-fibre-low-cost-materials.jpg\" alt=\"The equipment used to draw the fibre.\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 640px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 640\/427;\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2487\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The equipment used to draw the fibre. The furnace heats the tubes to around 2,200 degrees Celsius. Image author: Jose Luis Olivares\/MIT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The team, whose lead researcher is Yoel Fink, has referred to the process as a type of \u201calchemy\u201d. Using a preform which contains base materials of aluminium and silica glass, they have produced a fibre with an extremely pure crystalline silicon core. One of the advantages of this discovery is that both <strong>aluminium and silica glass are abundant, low-cost materials<\/strong>, which are frequently used in the fabrication of windows and window frames, for instance. But the <strong>implications<\/strong> go much further: with this technique of transforming aluminium into crystalline silicon cores, which are used to make solar cells and microchips, it may be <strong>possible to integrate electronic devices (semiconductors) directly inside the fibre<\/strong>, which opens up a range of applications, such as smart clothing or devices with even greater integration than existing ones. The results of the project have already been published in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/p>\n<p><i>Nature Communications<\/i><\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.madehow.com\/Volume-1\/Optical-Fiber.html<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/nemesis.tel.uva.es\/images\/tCO\/contenidos\/tema2\/tema2_1_1.htm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The discovery opens up the possibility of integrating electronic devices (semiconductors) directly inside the fibre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,33],"tags":[],"categorias-smart-power-":[],"paises-":[],"class_list":["post-7530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-and-technology","category-ingles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7530"},{"taxonomy":"categorias-smart-power-","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categorias-smart-power-?post=7530"},{"taxonomy":"paises-","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inmesol.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paises-?post=7530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}