Polymer Visible‐Light Fluorene‐Doped Waveguide Amplifiers for Plastic Optical Fiber Communication Systems

ABSTRACT With the increasing number of users in local networks, the demand for high‐efficiency short‐distance data transmission has surged. Plastic optical fiber (POF) communication systems with high speed, bandwidth, and flexibility have been used as ideal technologies for last‐mile applications. However, visible‐light signal intensity attenuation and data quality degradation in POF transmission have become extremely severe owing to the continuously increasing number of network nodes in a finite space. In this study, polymer visible‐light fluorene‐doped waveguide amplifiers (FDWAs) are proposed for POF communication systems. Both intermolecular energy‐assisted and balanced transfer processes are realized between triarylsulfonium salt photoinitiators and fluorescent small‐molecule oligomers, based on the Förster resonance energy transfer mechanism. The FDWAs can be fabricated using a UV direct‐writing technique. The gain coefficients of 1.32 dB/mm at 532 nm green light and 0.83 dB/mm at 655 nm red light under 405 nm pumping light are obtained. The proposed technique is suitable for high‐density local POF network applications.