The improved looks and quality images found with modern flat-screen LCD TVs are due in large part to the input of chemical engineers. Photo by Getty Images.
Fiber-optic cables are bundles of long, thin glass fibers, each narrower than a human hair. These glass strands transmit light signals over thousands of miles. Total internal reflection (100% of the light is reflected off the walls of the fiber, so no light is lost) guides light through these cables, enabling it to bend around corners and reach its destination very rapidly. This allows for real-time telecommunications and digital data transfer, without which modern communications would be impossible. Affected areas would include
- Modern “land-line” telephones,
- Cable television,
- Internet,
- Videoconferencing, and
- Electronic commerce.
Creating a strong, flexible backbone
Today, millions of miles of fiber-optic cables form the backbone of our instantaneous, worldwide voice-, video-, and data-transmission systems. But before this technology could become a reality, a reliable process for fabricating flexible fiber-optic cables had to be developed.
Although drawing glass into small-diameter fibers is a straightforward process, the thin glass fibers produced are very brittle and fracture easily. To solve this problem chemical engineers invented a process (called modified chemical vapor deposition, or MCVD) that coats the drawn glass fibers with a specialized polymer. This coating maintains the optical properties needed to guide light and data through the fibers, and even more important, it prevents the fibers from fracturing, no matter how severely they are bent.
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