A novel approach for the fabrication of high-quality preforms for use in the fabrication of photonic crystal fibers is described. The preforms are fabricated in a multistep process that involves stacking a bundle with rods and (or) tubes of two dissimilar glasses, fusing the bundle, and then etching the fused bundle in acid to remove one of the two glasses. The procedure for fabrication of the fused preforms is similar to that used in the fabrication of microchannel plate glass and yields periodically spaced, uniform, round channels that extend through the length of the preform.
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