Methods for making optical fiber preforms and microstructured optical fibers

摘要

A method of making an optical fiber preform includes depositing silica glass on the inside of a tube substrate via a plasma chemical vapor deposition (PCVD) operation. The parameters of the PCVD operation are controlled such that the silica glass deposited on the interior of the tube substrate contains a non-periodic array of voids in a cladding region of the optical fiber preform. The optical fiber preform may be used to produce an optical fiber having a core and a void containing cladding. The core of the optical fiber has a first index of refraction and the cladding has a second index of refraction less than that of the core.