Quartz fiber is a

fiber Fiber (spelled fibre in British English; from ) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often inco ...

created from high-purity quartz crystals. It is made by first softening quartz rods (in an oxyhydrogen flame) and then creating filaments from the rods. Since the creation of high-purity quartz crystals is an energy intensive process, quartz fiber is more expensive than alternatives (glass fiber and high-silica fiber) and has limited applications.

Manufacture

Quartz fiber is made from heating quartz rods with an oxyhydrogen flame. Then, filaments are drawn out of the quartz rod, creating quartz fibers. For optical fibers,

germanium Germanium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid or a nonmetal in the carbon group that is chemically ...

and

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol P and atomic number 15. All elemental forms of phosphorus are highly Reactivity (chemistry), reactive and are therefore never found in nature. They can nevertheless be prepared ar ...

can be added to increase the

refractive index In optics, the refractive index (or refraction index) of an optical medium is the ratio of the apparent speed of light in the air or vacuum to the speed in the medium. The refractive index determines how much the path of light is bent, or refrac ...

Properties

A single quartz fiber can have a

tensile strength Ultimate tensile strength (also called UTS, tensile strength, TS, ultimate strength or F_\text in notation) is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before breaking. In brittle materials, the ultimate ...

of . Quartz fibers are chemically stable as they are not affected by halogens (for the most part). Quartz fibers also have a higher thermal resistance than S-glass or

E-glass Glass fiber (American and British English spelling differences, or glass fibre) is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass. Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of gl ...

Applications

Since quartz fiber is expensive, it has limited applications. It is used mainly for producing

composite material A composite or composite material (also composition material) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or physical properties and are merged to create a ...

s (due to having higher stability compared to glass fiber) and in electrical applications where thermal resistance and

dielectric In electromagnetism, a dielectric (or dielectric medium) is an Insulator (electricity), electrical insulator that can be Polarisability, polarised by an applied electric field. When a dielectric material is placed in an electric field, electric ...

properties are important. It can be used in filtration applications where alternatives such as glass fiber filters cannot be used. Quartz fiber can also be used for physical devices (such as in quartz fiber dosimeters and quartz fiber electrometers). Quartz fibers can be used in fiber optics. This is due to a quartz fiber having the ability to transport

data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...

at a speed of 1

terabit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as ...

per second, and having a transmission loss of 1

decibel The decibel (symbol: dB) is a relative unit of measurement equal to one tenth of a bel (B). It expresses the ratio of two values of a Power, root-power, and field quantities, power or root-power quantity on a logarithmic scale. Two signals whos ...

per kilometer. Similar to how

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) is a common type of fibre-reinforced plastic, fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened i ...

can be made, quartz fiber can be used to make composite materials by combining with a resin. The fiber can be weaved into a cloth ("quartz cloth", "silica cloth"), or chopped to a uniform length. Three-dimensional quartz phenolic is an example of such a material.

References

{{Reflist Quartz Fibers

Manufacture

Properties

Applications

See also

References