BEYOND FIBER: Blog Articles

Are Polymer Waveguides in the Future for the Fiber Optic Industry?

Since the early 1970s, the demand for higher communication and information traffic has caused the optical fiber network to burgeon. In fact, the modern fiber optic network comprises a large part of the Internet backbone. This includes ...
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Achieving a Teflon-like Polymer with ÅngströmLink AL-2233

Where can I get a little bit of Teflon?  ÅngströmLink AL-2233 is basically that. A Teflon-like polymer dissolved in an evaporative solvent.  To get a thin layer of ‘almost -Teflon’, make a thin layer of AL-2233 and let the solvent evaporate. What...
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Wafer Level Optics – An Example of Micro Imprinting

What is an example of micro imprinting? One of the best examples of wafer level optics is the camera module on your mobile phone. The basic idea is to fabricate layers of microlenses that are stacked up to make the complete optical element, which is then bonded...
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Solutions at Fiber Optic Center

FOC’s ÅngströmLink™ web page is your connection to unique optical products to meet new and emerging technical challenges including optical plastics, hard cure, soft cure, optical fluid, optical coatings, thixotropic gels, optical polyimide, silica spheres:...
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Let’s Get Really Small

Nothing in the ordinary world informs our intuition about how materials will behave at molecular interfaces. The cartoon below shows a typical imprinting process: a photoimageable imprint resin formed into a layer on a rigid substrate (silicon or glass wafer), with the...
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Selection of Index Matching Materials

Designing optics for index matching requires knowledge of the refractive index of the adjoining optical materials. By convention, the value of the refractive index at the Sodium D line (589nm, ‘yellow’) is usually quoted for optical materials, even when the...
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Polymers – Everything You Ever Wanted to Know

Welcome to the first blog post on Polymers from FOC.  If you begin following me on Twitter, you will read many insights on FOC’s different specialty products that I manage.  I titled this first blog “everything you ever wanted to know in...
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Let’s Talk Imprint Materials and What We Really Mean…

If you are my age you will remember the rubber stamp kit you had as a kid. Today’s imprint? Same thing, just really tiny. Apparently the only way to satisfy our ever increasing desire for smaller, faster, lighter devices in our homes and to carry around or attach to...
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