Light-emitting fabrics integrated with structured polymer optical fibers treated with an infrared CO2 laser

Abstract

This paper describes woven fabrics made from polymer optical fibers (POF), which are treated with a CO2 laser so that the resultant surface notches on the POFs facilitate side emission of light. The transmission and side-emitting behavior of POF with surface notches are studied in term of the variation in bending curvatures, which is related to end-usage of the woven fabrics as flexible displays, wearable phototherapy devices and fashion accessories. The measured power of transmission of light from the POF rapidly decreases with increasing bending curvature. However, the measured power of side-emission of light from the notched POFs remains almost constant at various bending curvatures within the experimental range. Theoretical analysis of the light propagation in a notched POF is conducted, which illustrates that more light is reflected from one side of the notch when the bending curvature is increased hence the transmission of the light is decreased. The theoretical and experimental results reach a good agreement.