Abstract

We report an effectively simple dry silver electromigration technology designed to fabricate low-loss deep channel waveguides on a specially chosen BF450 glass substrate with refractive index of 1.472. The simplicity is achieved by replacing the gold or aluminum film electrodes commonly deposited on the glass substrate with two stainless-steel electrodes to facilitate the electromigration process. In contrast to earlier ion exchange waveguides reported, a relatively high electrical field of 545 V/mm was applied to the glass to speed up the migration and also to prevent the silver ions that were driven into the glass from reducing into silver atoms, a major contributor to waveguide loss. The deep channel waveguides thus fabricated showed no discolors or cracks, of which the attenuation losses of less than 0.1 dB/cm were later measured using our 0.6328 µm He-Ne laser edge-coupling setup. Lastly, the scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) detector was adopted to obtain the concentration profile of silver ions distributed in a channel waveguide region after the exchange. The EDX measurements were then utilized along with the Gladstone-Dale relation to deduce the refractive index profile, of which a nearly step-like profile was deduced from every deep channel waveguide fabricated.

[IEEE ]

Waveguide coupler for potassium- and silver-ion-exchanged waveguides in glass

Seppo Honkanen, Pekka Pöyhönen, Ari Tervonen, and S. Iraj Najafi
Appl. Opt. 32(12) 2109-2111 (1993)

Low-loss channel waveguides and Y-splitter formed by ion-exchange in silica-on-silicon

Zian He, Yigang Li, Yingfeng Li, Yanwu Zhang, Liying Liu, and Lei Xu
Opt. Express 16(5) 3172-3177 (2008)

Characterization and modeling of planar surface and buried glass waveguides made by field-assisted K⁺ ion exchange

Peter G. Noutsios and Gar Lam Yip
Appl. Opt. 31(25) 5283-5291 (1992)

Silver and potassium ion-exchanged waveguides in glasses doped with PbS semiconductor quantum dots

Jason M. Auxier, Seppo Honkanen, Axel Schülzgen, Michael M. Morrell, Matthew A. Leigh, Sabyasachi Sen, Nicholas F. Borrelli, and Nasser Peyghambarian
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 23(6) 1037-1045 (2006)

Systematic modeling study of channel waveguide fabrication by thermal silver ion exchange

Guangyu Li, Kim A. Winick, Henry C. Griffin, and Joseph S. Hayden
Appl. Opt. 45(8) 1743-1755 (2006)