Sol-gel process for fabricating germanium-doped silica article

Abstract

A sol-gel process for fabricating bulk, germanium-doped silica bodies useful for a variety of applications, including core rods, substrate tubes, immediate overcladding, pumped fiber lasers, and planar waveguides, is provided. The process involves the steps of providing a dispersion of silica particles in an aqueous quaternary ammonium germanate solution—typically tetramethylammonium germanate, gelling the dispersion to provide a gel body, and drying, heat treating, and sintering the body to provide the germanium-doped silica glass.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.