Quartz fiber is a

fiber Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) 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 incorpora ...

created from high purity natural

quartz crystals Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

. It is made by first softening quartz rods (in an

oxyhydrogen Oxyhydrogen is a mixture of hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) gases. This gaseous mixture is used for torches to process refractory materials and was the first gaseous mixture used for welding. Theoretically, a ratio of 2:1 hydrogen:oxygen is enough ...

flame) and then creating filaments from the rods. Since natural quartz crystals of high purity are rare, 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 and

phosphorus Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ear ...

can be added to increase the

refractive index In optics, the refractive index (or refraction index) of an optical medium is a dimensionless number that gives the indication of the light bending ability of that medium. The refractive index determines how much the path of light is bent, or ...

Properties

A single quartz fiber can have a

tensile strength Ultimate tensile strength (UTS), often shortened to tensile strength (TS), ultimate strength, or F_\text within equations, is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before breaking. In brittle materials t ...

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.

Applications

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

composite material A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...

s (due to having higher stability compared to

glass fiber Glass fiber ( 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 glass fiber was only made possible with the inventio ...

) and in electrical applications where

thermal resistance Thermal resistance is a heat property and a measurement of a temperature difference by which an object or material resists a heat flow. Thermal resistance is the reciprocal of thermal conductance. * (Absolute) thermal resistance ''R'' in kelvi ...

and

dielectric In electromagnetism, a dielectric (or dielectric medium) is an electrical insulator that can be polarised by an applied electric field. When a dielectric material is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the mate ...

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 dosimeter A quartz fiber dosimeter, sometimes called a self indicating pocket dosimeter (SIPD) or self reading pocket dosimeter (SRPD) or quartz fibre electrometer (QFE), is a type of radiation dosimeter, a pen-like device that measures the cumulativ ...

s 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 In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...

at a speed of 1

terabit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. 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 a ...

per second, and having a transmission loss of 1 decibel per kilometer.

References

{{Reflist Quartz Fibers

Manufacture

Properties

Applications

See also

References