Patent Application
20160257572
This application incorporates by reference the following U.S. patent applications, which are filed concurrently with this application:
U.S. patent application Ser. No. [TREVOR 11], having the title “Manufacturing Irregular-Shaped Preforms”;
U.S. patent application Ser. No. [TREVOR 9], having the title “Using Silicon Tetrafluoride in Powder-in-Tube (PIT) Process”;
U.S. patent application Ser. No. [TREVOR 10], having the title “Easy Removal of a Thin-Walled Tube in a Powder-in-Tube (PIT) Process.”
1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to manufacturing and, more particularly, to manufacturing preforms.
2. Description of Related Art
Optical fiber preforms possess properties that determine the characteristics of optical fibers that are eventually drawn from those preforms. The quality of an optical fiber correlates with the quality of materials that are used in manufacturing the preform from which the optical fiber is drawn. As one can imagine, using higher-quality starting materials results in increased costs. In view of this, there are ongoing efforts to reduce the manufacturing costs of the preforms, and concurrently to improve the quality of the preforms.
Many aspects of the disclosure can be better understood with reference to the following drawings. The components in the drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon clearly illustrating the principles of the present disclosure. Moreover, in the drawings, like reference numerals designate corresponding parts throughout the several views.
Currently, optical fibers are designed with very stringent specifications in optical performance, mechanical strength, physical dimensions, and reliability. With increasing demands for bandwidth, these specifications continue to become increasingly stringent. In order for optical fibers to meet such stringent specifications, manufacturers employ exacting controls over the manufacturing process. While strict controls over the process contribute to the fiber quality, another factor that affects the quality of the fiber is the quality of the starting materials that are used to manufacture the optical fiber preforms from which the fibers are drawn. For example, if a preform contains impurities or defects, then those imperfections can result in degraded performance. Specifically, surface contamination and refractory particles, which act as stress centers during the fiber drawing process, affect the mechanical properties of optical fibers and contribute to fiber breakage. As such, much effort is devoted to using high-purity starting materials with minimal contaminants.
In one preform manufacturing process, known as a powder-in-tube (PIT) process, a silica tube is filled with silica powder and consolidated at high temperatures in the presence of a vacuum, thereby resulting in an optical fiber preform. Because conventional PIT processes typically use fully densified vitreous or crystalline silica, any refractory particle that is trapped within those densified material becomes a part of the preform. Consequently, those trapped refractory particles degrade the mechanical properties of the optical fiber that is eventually drawn from the preform. Thus, in order produce industrially-acceptable preforms, the conventional PIT processes use ultra-pure silica powder. In other words, because the resulting optical fiber inherits the impurities in the silica powder in conventional PIT processes, those processes strive to use silica of the highest purity as the starting materials. Unfortunately, ultra-pure silica is expensive. Hence, the cost of the resulting fiber is directly traceable to the cost of the silica starting materials.
The embodiments disclosed herein seek to ameliorate the high costs associated with the use of ultra-pure silica by using a lower-cost starting material and purifying the lower-cost starting material to an acceptable level of purity during the preform manufacturing process. In one embodiment, instead of using fully densified silica particles, the disclosed processes use mesoporous silica grains that have a substantially monodisperse size distribution. Stated differently, mesoporous silica grains with substantially uniform grain size are used as the starting materials for the disclosed PIT processes. In one preferred embodiment, 250-micrometer-size mesoporous silica grains are used as the particular starting material.
To the extent that pores in the mesoporous silica grains are connected to the surface of the grains, the connected porosity provides a mechanism that allows impurities that are smaller than the pore size to diffuse to the surface of the silica grain, thereby permitting purification of the mesoporous silica grains. Since the mesoporous structure permits purification, unlike the fully densified silica crystals, the disclosed PIT process is not as restricted to the use of ultra-high-purity silica that is typically required for conventional PIT processes. Thus, the disclosed PIT process results in cost reductions that are typically not achievable in conventional processes for similar quality optical fiber preforms. Additionally, the porosity of the mesoporous silica permits doping during the PIT process. And, since the mesoporous silica has a higher surface-to-volume ratio than fully densified silica, the temperature at which the mesoporous silica softens is lower than the temperature at which the silica tube softens. For this reason, the mesoporous silica can be sintered concurrently with the consolidation of the silica tube. The ability to sinter and consolidate in a single step further reduces costs because only one high-temperature step is needed to accomplish both sintering and consolidation.
As described in greater detail herein, using substantially homogeneous mesoporous silica grains provides a more economical approach to manufacturing optical fiber preforms. Having provided an overview of several embodiments, reference is now made in detail to the description of the embodiments as illustrated in the drawings. While several embodiments are described in connection with these drawings, there is no intent to limit the disclosure to the embodiment or embodiments disclosed herein. On the contrary, the intent is to cover all alternatives, modifications, and equivalents.
Generally,
With the starting tubes and configurations of
Unlike conventional PIT processes that use dense fused vitreous or crystalline silica grains, the tube-filling setup of
It is worthwhile to note is that the random-close-packed density is the same irrespective of the grain size, as long as the grains are substantially homogeneous. As such, whether the grains are uniformly 25 microns, 70 microns, 150 microns, or 250 microns, as long as the size distribution is monodisperse, the packing density is substantially the same.
One way of manufacturing the substantially homogeneous mesoporous silica grains 320 is by using a sol-gel process. Since sol-gel processes are well-known in the art, only a truncated discussion of the process is provided herein to properly frame the inventive PIT processes. Within the sol-gel process, fumed silica is dispersed in water using an appropriately-small quantity of tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide. This dispersion is mixed under high-shear conditions and then centrifuged to remove particulates of higher density, typically comprising metals, metal oxides, and large particulates of comparable density, usually of incompletely dispersed silica agglomerates. The mixture is filtered again, but this time to remove dissolved gases and bubbles, and also to further remove particles up to the cut-off size that is relevant to fiber strength degradation. Thereafter, the mixture is formed into a solid material by optionally gelling, settling, or mechanically compacting. The solid form is dried, which results in a mesoporous silica cake. And, it is from this mesoporous silica cake that the mesoporous silica grains 320 are derived. Specifically, the dried cake is crushed and ground into a desired uniform grain size (e.g., 250-micron-size grains). At this point, the impurities in the dried gel include small amounts of water and organic species (a few percent by weight of each), a fraction of a percent surface hydroxyl, and parts-per-million (ppm) levels of metals and metal oxides. In other words, at this point, the mesoporous silica grains 320 still have impurities. However, as discussed below, those impurities can be removed during the disclosed PIT process.
A closer examination of the pore structure is helpful in understanding the purification mechanism in the disclosed PIT process. For this reason,
With this in mind, attention is turned to
Before discussing the purification process, it is worthwhile to note another advantage of using mesoporous silica grains 320 with the input ports 610, 620. Namely, the pore structure 500 permits doping during the PIT process, and the input ports 610,620 provide a mechanism by which dopants can be introduced to the mesoporous silica grains 320. As one can see, the grain-sealed bottom 130 expels 650 excess dopants and permits regulation of pressure within the closed environment.
As for the purification process, in operation, once the mesoporous silica grains 320 are packed in the thin-walled tube 110, the purification setup 600 is heated to approximately 600 degrees Celsius (° C.) to remove residual water and organic species in an anaerobic environment followed by an oxidizing environment. Since those compounds are trapped in a mesoporous material 500, the heat causes those impurities to diffuse to the surface of the mesoporous silica grain 410 for eventual evacuation through the output vent. Since 600° C. is well below the melting point of silica, the mesoporous silica material 500 maintains its shape during this evacuation process.
Once the water and organic species are removed, chlorine is introduced into the closed environment through the input port 610, and the temperature of the heating element is raised to approximately 1000° C. At this temperature, the remaining water that is chemically bonded with the silica now reacts with the chlorine, thereby resulting in the dehydroxilation of the silica. The byproducts from the dehydroxilation process are expelled through the output vent 620.
In the next purification step, metal and metal oxide refractories (such as zirconia and chromia) are removed or transformed in a nitrogen environment by introducing thionyl chloride into the closed environment via the input port 610, and increasing the temperature of the heating element 630 to approximately 700° C. for thionyl chloride and approximately 1250° C. for chlorine. The purification process yields a fully dehydroxilated, high-purity, mesoporous silica grain 320, which is ready for sintering and consolidation, which are discussed in greater detail with reference to
Since the mesoporous silica (due to its small fundamental particle size) has a higher surface-to-volume ratio than fully densified silica, the consolidation temperature of the mesoporous silica grains 320 is lower than the temperature at which the silica tube softens. The vacuum within the silica tube 110 assists shrinking of the tube onto the consolidated grain. This is accomplished by increasing the heating elements 730 to approximately 1725° C. while drawing a vacuum, the mesoporous silica grains 320 can be sintered before the fully densified silica tube 110 reaches its melting point, for some embodiments.
As shown in
The embodiments disclosed herein seek to ameliorate the high costs associated with the use of ultra-pure silica by using a lower-cost starting material and purifying the lower-cost starting material to an acceptable level of purity during the preform manufacturing process. In one embodiment, instead of using fully densified silica particles, the disclosed processes use mesoporous silica grains that have a substantially monodisperse size distribution. Stated differently, mesoporous silica grains with substantially uniform grain size are used as the starting materials for the disclosed PIT processes. In one preferred embodiment, 250-micrometer-size mesoporous silica grains are used as the particular starting material.
As described with reference to
Any process descriptions or blocks in flow charts should be understood as representing modules, segments, or portions of code which include one or more executable instructions for implementing specific logical functions or steps in the process, and alternate implementations are included within the scope of the preferred embodiment of the present disclosure in which functions may be executed out of order from that shown or discussed, including substantially concurrently or in reverse order, depending on the functionality involved, as would be understood by those reasonably skilled in the art of the present disclosure.
Although exemplary embodiments have been shown and described, it will be clear to those of ordinary skill in the art that a number of changes, modifications, or alterations to the disclosure as described may be made. All such changes, modifications, and alterations should therefore be seen as within the scope of the disclosure.
