
24.3.5 Photonic Crystal or ‘‘Holey Fibers’’
The only set of experimental results on photonic crystal (PC) fibers is that of
Zhou et al. [52]. These workers have found that the two PC fibers they have
studied, with respectively 90 and 6 holes, show breaking loads effectively 10 and
20% higher than that found for standard single mode fused silica clad fibers.
When account is taken of the differences in cross-sectional area (3% and 0.4%,
respectively), the strengths are 4.45, 5.0, and 5.4 GPa, respectively, for
the standard single-mode fiber, 90-hole fiber, and 6-hole fibers. However, the
experiments were not well controlled in that the three fibers