Characteristics of polymer light conduits from different manufacturing processes

Abstract

The characteristics of polymer light conduits (PLCs) prepared from three different processes are compared: (1) a bulk polymerization and melt spinning process (PLC1), ( 2 ) a thermal polymerization (PLC2 ), and (3 ) a UV curing photopolymerization (PLC3-PLC4) of a monomer mixture in a fluorinated ethylene propylene tube. PLC1 and PLC2 were obtained from Toray and Lumenyte, respectively. New PLCs, PLC3 and PLC4, were prepared from the monomer mixtures consisted of methyl methacrylate, 2-ethyl-hexyl acrylate, and the crosslinking agent polyethylglycol 200 diacrylate and diallyl phthalate, respectively. All four polymer light conduits contain the acrylic moiety. PLC2 may also contain the plasticizer additives, which resulted in an excellent flexibility but with a poor thermal stability. The flexibilities of PLC2 and PLC3 were significantly improved from that of PLC1 due to the insertion of a plasticizer and the long alkyl chain monomer 2-EHA, respectively. The much larger numerical apertures of PLC2-PLC4 than that of PLC1 suggest that PLC2-PLC4 can have a wide angle application. The transmitted distance of PLC1 is larger than those of PLC2-PLC4. However, the illumination intensity of PLC1 is worse than those of PLC2-PLC4. This result indicates that PLC1 is suitable for the applications as PLCs with the characteristics of long distance and low illumination intensity, while PLC2-PLC4 are suitable for short distance and high illumination intensity applications.