The application discloses a method for preparing
rare earth doped
quartz glass by composite
acid catalyzed sol-gel, comprising the following steps: mixing
tetraethyl orthosilicate,
ethanol and deionized water, and adding HCl and HF to make the
tetraethyl orthosilicate hydrolyze and polycondensate to form an initial
silicon-
oxygen network; adding an aluminum salt precursor and a
rare earth salt precursor into the obtained
system to obtain a doped silica
sol, making the doped silica
sol gelate and performing aging treatment; performing stage
drying on the obtained whole wet gel to obtain a whole dry gel; performing stage heat treatment on the whole dry gel to obtain a porous precursor which maintains a whole form; and directly placing the porous precursor under low-pressure high-temperature conditions for densification treatment without performing powderization,
grinding,
powder pressing or re-molding to obtain transparent
rare earth doped
quartz glass. The application does not need powderization and secondary melting, and is suitable for preparation of rare earth doped
quartz glass and
optical fiber preform materials.