Sapphire fibers: optical attenuation and splicing techniques. 
The optical attenuation in sapphire fibers was examined.  Attenuation was found to depend heavily on injection conditions.  A number of techniques for making sapphire-silica fiber splices were attempted, with an effort toward optimizing injection conditions in the sapphire fiber.  The most successful of these techniques, interior capillary-tube splicing, produced robust splices with an attenuation of less than 1 dB.