Heraeus Comvance
Heraeus Comvance is one of the world's leading quartz glass manufacturers for fiber optics, telecommunications and specialty applications. With its sites in Germany, North America and China, the operating company has significantly contributed to the optical data transmission technology. The product portfolio includes high purity fused silica tubes for core rod manufacturing, large RIC cylinders as cladding for telecom fibers and preform manufacturing services. By developing products for next generation optical fibers, Heraeus Comvance enables communication beyond today’s imagination and helps to connect the world.
Since the 1970's, Heraeus has helped shape the telecommunication industry. With great experience in fused silica, the operating company works on new, innovative products and processes for optimizing today’s fiber production and turn R&D ideas into production scale products for future fiber ideas. Heraeus Comvance is the largest manufacturer of synthetic fused silica for telecommunication fibers and helps to connect the world. New technologies are shaping our future. New technologies and applications are developing because of the improved ways of communications.
Challenges for today's fiber producers: The single mode fiber is the most common fiber type by fiber length produced. A producer of single mode fibers (SMF) faces many challenges. They include making an excellent product at a competitive price, reliably, and in large volume.
The Heraeus’ RIC process has been the driving force in the industry to increased batch sizes and helps lower single mode fiber production cost. The RIC® process (The Rod in Cylinder process) is a large volume production process for the manufacturing of optical fiber. Heraeus developed this process in 2002 and it has seen some modifications through the years. A state of the art preform yields 4000 km of fiber.
Heraeus Comvance offers a variety of products and solutions for passive components of the telecommunications industry. The product portfolio includes large RIC cylinders as cladding for telecom fibers, high purity fused silica tubes for core rod manufacturing as well as preform manufacturing services. Apart from that the company is developing products for next-generation optical fibers.
The RIC cylinders make up the largest part of the cladding of single mode fibers produced via the RIC process. Over the years the size of the cylinders has grown and will grow to improve the cost of fiber production. Heraeus large scale preforms allow for a most economic fiber draw, by reducing the idle time per week as these preforms can run multiple days.
Fused silica tubes for fiber production: Heraeus high purity fused silica tubes are produced without forming tools and provide an excellent surface with tight geometrical tolerances.
Heraeus ZANDOSIL® is a synthetic, amorphous silica with highest purity. Pyrogenic silica of high purity is used in various applications as raw material or as functional additive to optimize product properties. Heraeus ZANDOSIL® is a high purity silica available in different product solutions: Powder, Granulate and Dispersion.
Next generation fiber products: Heraeus has always been an innovator of the fiber optics industry. Current hotspots in R&D are ultra low loss fibers and multicore fibers among more exotic topics.
"We are the largest manufacturer of synthetic fused silica for telecommunication fibers, and we take pride in saying: we help to connect the world."
- Dr. Jan Vydra, President Heraeus Comvance -
