Fiber optic sheets of ridged polymer films

Fiber optic sheets (10 lines/mm) have been made by a new technique in which a monomer is diffused into a ridged polymer film with a higher refractive index and then polymerized by gamma-ray irradiation. The diffusion profile was controllable from the clad type to the self-focusing type by adjusting the diffusion conditions. The attenuation in the polycarbonate light path (n = 1.59), enclosed with the chemically fixed methyl acrylate polymer (n = 1.49), was 0.5-0.7 dB/cm lambda = 633 nm.