Oil-in-water emulsion impregnated electrospun poly(ethylene terephthalate) fiber mat as a novel tool for optical fiber cleaning.

ABSTRACT

HYPOTHESIS: The complete removal of remaining polymer debris after stripping of optical fiber cables is essential for high precision connection between two fibers. It can be anticipated that electrospun porous membranes as cleaning wipes are able to trap and retain polymer debris within their pores. Impregnation of an oil-in-water emulsion as cleaning agent lowers the interfacial tension between debris and the optical fiber thereby enabling the straightforward removal of polymer debris from the optical fiber. EXPERIMENTS Electrospun membranes of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and cellulose acetate (CA) were obtained with fiber diameters of 0.430 µm and 2 µm respectively. The oil-in-water emulsion was formulated with 10 wt% medium chain triglyceride (MCT) and 10 wt% Tween 80 surfactant in an aqueous phosphate buffer solution. FINDINGS: In a scoring range from 0 to 5 for which the score 0 indicated superior cleaning and the score 5 referred to the least efficient cleaning, the electrospun fiber mats (without emulsion) scored within the range of 2-4 while emulsion impregnated electrospun fiber mats revealed the best score of 0. A drastic improvement was thus clearly evident from the obtained results when the cleaning emulsion was applied. The materials developed herein thus represent a new class of soft cleaning agents for optical fibers.