Contamination of furnace-drawn silica fibers

Contamination originating in an electric resistance furnace was found to increase substantially the losses of unclad and plastic-clad silica fibers. In contrast, the losses of doped silica fibers with sufficient cladding thickness were unaffected by impure drawing conditions. Operating the furnace without muffle tube and protecting the preform with a pure, inert gas injected via a counter-flow resulted in practically contamination-free operation and unclad-fiber losses as low as 3 dB/km. The removal of the muffle tube significantly simplified the furnace operation and reduced the cycling time from many hours to a few minutes.