THz wave transmission in thin-wall PMMA pipes fabricated by fiber drawing technique

The fiber drawing technique provides a simple way to fabricate thin-wall polymer pipe with smooth surface and sufficient structure strength for bending. In this paper, fiber drawing technique is used to fabricate thin-wall polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) pipe for THz transmission. The fabricated pipe has a wall thickness as small as 200 μm, which can be used as antiresonant terahertz (THz) waveguide with broad transmission bandwidth. Its transmission performance is measured at 3.1 THz, including output field distribution, transmission loss and bending loss, showing its potential on THz transmission. Theoretical analysis shows that further performance improvement can be achieved by optimizing the wall thickness and utilizing the polymer materials with lower absorption in THz band.