Plastic optical fiber

[citation needed] Traditionally, PMMA (acrylic) comprises the core (96% of the cross section in a fiber 1mm in diameter), and fluorinated polymers are the cladding material.

Since the late 1990s much higher performance graded-index (GI-POF) fiber based on amorphous fluoropolymer (poly(perfluoro-butenylvinyl ether), CYTOP[1]) has begun to appear in the marketplace.

Polymer optical fibers can be used for remote sensing and multiplexing due to their low cost and high resistance.

There are advantages in doing this over using silica fiber since the POF can be stretched further without breaking, some applications are described in the PHOSFOS project page.

The combination of all these techniques has proven to be an efficient way of achieving low-cost implementations at the same time that the transmission theoretical maximum capacity of the POF is approached.