Long-term reliability of plastic ferrules for single-mode fiber-optic connectors

We examined the creep properties and hazard rates of plastic ferrules to ensure the long-term reliability of optical fiber connections. The endface deformation ΔL had to be smaller than 3 μm to keep the insertion-loss and return-loss fluctuation to acceptable levels in the worst case of random concatenation of similarly deformed plastic ferrules. From the fluctuation data, we estimated the time-to-failure t_f at which the ΔL value became 3 μm. We estimated the acceleration parameters, median lifetime ξ, and hazard rates λ by using t_f values based on Weibull statistics. The ξ values decreased rapidly with increasing temperature and relative humidity. We found we could except small λ values of < 0.1 FIT (FIT=10^-9/hour) and of 1 FIT for 20 years in a normal atmosphere (25°C/50%RH) and in a more severe case of 25°C/90%RH, respectively.