TopoDesign

German Ministry of Science and Education – BMBF (“Entrepreneurial Regions – The BMBF Innovation Initiative for the New German Länder”)

TopoDesign concerns on the one hand the parameterisation and monitoring of material requirement profiles for chemically and mechanically robust glass fibres, and on the other hand the pre-competitive development of alternative bonding processes as well as processes to increase chemical robustness. The following goals are being pursued:

Parameterisation and monitoring of material requirement profiles

In coordination with the collaborative partners, parameter matrices are to be developed by which the mechanical robustness (bending and defect sensitivity) as well as the chemical robustness (thermo-chemical corrosion stability in different media) can be recorded. For this purpose, technical application cases must be transferred into suitable physical key figures and material properties. Furthermore, tests, in particular accelerated test procedures in the form of time and temperature scalable master curves, must be developed for this and these tests must be carried out continuously. The basis for this is initially the material-scientific, mechanistic investigation and evaluation of damage scenarios and their kinetics.

Pre-competitive development of alternative consolidation processes

The generation of hierarchical surface structures based on oxide or oxynitride is investigated as an alternative consolidation process. For this purpose, a process is to be developed and prepared for pilot scale, which is based on a slurry-based particle coating of optical preforms and, if necessary, their nitriding before fibre drawing to generate oxynitride surface areas. The surface reactivity is optimised by specifically adapting the slurry composition and the preform surface obtained in this way. The transfer of such modified preforms into pilot development is accompanied by multi-scale computer simulation.

This project is part of the TOF-Consortium - Tailored Optical Fiber.