Specialty Optical Fibers Handbook

In 1974, H. N. Vazirani of Bell Telephone Laboratories developed one of the

first UV-curable coatings for optical fiber. U.S. Patent 4,099,837 [13] describes

that the ‘‘polymer coating comprises the polymerization product of a prepolymer

mixture resulting from reacting acrylic acid with a 0.4 to 1.0 weight ratio mixture

of aliphatic diglycidyl ether to aromatic diglycidyl ether, and further character-

ized in that polymerization product contains a UV sensitizer in order to cure

said prepolymer mixture with ultraviolet light.’’ Additional claims cited 1,4-

butanediol diglycidyl ether as the aliphatic ether and the diglycidyl ether of

halogenated bisphenol A as the aromatic ether. The use of a silane or titanate

coupling agent was also claimed.

The