Jet Assisted Aerosol Chemical Vapor Deposition for Optical Fiber Synthesis

Various kinds of high quality optical fibers are routinely fabricated by the modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD), in which fine particles are generated through the oxidation of chemical precursor and deposited in a silica tube reactor. Efficiency, rate, and uniformity of particle deposition determine the quality and cost of optical fibers; therefore efforts to enhance aerosol deposition performance should be important for further improving both quality and cost. Here we propose a jet assisted aerosol chemical vapor deposition method utilizing gas jets in the conventional MCVD silica tube reactor for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency, rate, and uniformity of particle deposition. High temperature helium gas is injected radially through an electrically heated thin tube inserted inside the silica tube. High temperature gas jets push particles generated in a tube toward the tube wall and therefore shorten the axial length of particle trajectories before deposition and cause particles to experience higher thermophoretic force. As a result, deposition efficiency (and rate) was found to considerably increase compared to the conventional method, and the uniformity was also significantly improved.