Femtosecond laser writing of photonic devices in borate glasses compositionally designed to be laser writable

Abstract

The design and performance of borate glass samples compositionally pre-designed to be femtosecond laser writable via laser-induced ion migration is reported in this Letter. It is demonstrated that borate glasses modified on purpose with small amounts of ${\mathrm{La}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_3$ and ${\mathrm{Na}}_2\mathrm{O}$ can be straightforwardly used to produce high-index contrast ($\mathrm{\Delta }n$) waveguides by femtosecond-laser-assisted ion migration. The positive $\mathrm{\Delta }n$ of the waveguides is caused by the local enrichment of ${\mathrm{La}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_3$ in the guiding region with a slope of $8·{10}^{-3}{(\mathrm{mol}.\%)}^{-1}$. The value of this is consistent with numerical aperture measurements of the waveguides and local compositional measurements at the guiding region performed by energy-dispersive x-ray micro-analysis. The maximum achievable $\mathrm{\Delta }n$ values can be controlled through the initial ${\mathrm{La}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_3$ content of the glass. Maximum $\mathrm{\Delta }n$ values $>{10}^{-2}$ for samples with just 5.5 mol. % of ${\mathrm{La}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_3$ have been produced. This compositional design approach could be potentially used to produce highly efficient femtosecond laser writeable glasses in other glass families.

© 2018 Optical Society of America

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