Fiber optic cables are made of three parts: the core, cladding, and coating. The coating protects these inner layers from damage. This is a thin layer that is extruded over the core and serves as the boundary that contains the light waves (more on this later), enabling data to travel through the length of the fiber. Cladding is what surrounds the core of an optical fiber and has a lower refractive index than the core. This property is useful in myriad technical applications, such as for data transmission in telecommunications, in medical applications, and in lamps and other lighting systems. Ultra-high-purity chlorosilanes from Evonik. Coating materials are carefully formulated and tested to optimize this protective role as well as the glass fiber performance. For a standard-size fiber with a 125-µm cladding diameter and a 250-µm coating diameter, 75% of the fiber's three-dimensional volume is the polymer coating.
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