What is the most transparent polymer?

The development of polymer optical fiber (POF) leads to the fundamental question about the transmission loss limit of amorphous polymer glasses. The two important intrinsic loss factors in amorphous polymer optical fibers are molecular vibration absorption and scattering due to fluctuation. In this paper, we have investigated the lower limit of the inherent light transmission loss of amorphous polymer glass from its molecular structure by using the Morse potential theory for absorption and the fluctuation theory for scattering. The theoretical lower limit of the attenuation of the amorphous perfluoropolymer is 0.3 dB km^-1 at 1.3 μm, and is comparable with that of silica fiber. Amorphous perfluoropolymer seems to be a most transparent polymer.