Hollow polycarbonate waveguides with inner Cu coatings for delivery of terahertz radiation

Terahertz (THz) radiation has important applications in spectroscopy, imaging, and space science. Fiber optics for the THz region have been limited to rigid hollow metallic waveguides or short lengths of solid-core transparent dielectrics such as sapphire and plastic. We have fabricated flexible, hollow polycarbonate waveguides with interior Cu coatings for broadband THz transmission using simple liquid-phase chemistry techniques. The losses for these hollow-core guides were measured using a tunable, cw single-mode far IR laser. The losses for the best guides were found to be less than four dB/m and the single mode of the laser was preserved for the smaller bore waveguides.