A Mass Transport Model for CVD Coating of Optical Fibers

Abstract

Carbon coated optical fibers are produced by the chemical vapor deposition process which includes multi-species mass transport with chemical reactions. A proper numerical model of this process will help elucidate the basic mechanisms and optimize the process to improve coating quality. A heat transfer model has been developed in our research group. We are now developing an applicable chemical kinetics model to include mass transport with gas phase and surface reactions. Several different chemical reactor models have been tried, including a continuous-stirred tank reactor (CSTR) model, a plug flow reactor (PFR) model and a multi-component diffusion model with the Maxwell-Stefan approximations. We found that in reactor conditions with well-mixed or large mass Peclet number, the CSTR and PFR models validate well with experimental results. But a multi-component gas diffusion model is needed for low mass Peclet number conditions. The model has been extended to a wider range of temperatures necessary for this optical fiber coating process.