A Fabrication Process for Microstructured Optical Fibers

In this paper, a fabrication process is introduced and demonstrated for a square microstructured optical fiber lattice. An existing mathematical model of the manufacturing process of a single-hole capillary tube was modified to identify parameters for the microstructured fiber case. Commercial interests in silica microstructured optical fiber have resulted in the limited documentation of the fabrication process. This work may provide a straightforward technique to produce high-quality novel silica microstructured optical fibers with the potential to serve as a "road map" to future research in the area of micro- and nanostructured fiber development