Flexible ABS hollow waveguides with an inner copper coating for terahertz transmission

Abstract

We fabricated flexible hollow fibres with an inner copper coating. A liquid-phase chemical deposition process was used to coat copper thin films inside an acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic tube. The attenuation characteristics of terahertz(THz)radiation in ABS plastic tubes with bore diameters of 2, 3, and 5 mm were determined at 0.32, 0.65, and 0.98 THz. The lowest loss of 0.85 dB/m at 0.98 THz was obtained for hybrid TE mode propagation in a waveguide consisting of a 0.7-µm- thick copper film layer deposited inside a 97.5-cm-long ABS plastic tube with a 5-mm bore.