What makes SiO2 an excellent cladding material for optical fibers?

[Ghassan99]

can anyone please explain this property of silicon:
An excellent oxide as the low-refractive-index cladding material.
thanks

 

[carlgrace]

That wouldn't be a property of silicon but presumably it's native oxide, SiO2. It's an excellent oxide because it isn't water soluble as germanium oxide (GeO2).

SiO2's low refractive index means it is used to build optical fibers. You can find out a lot about this on Wikipedia.