Single mode ridge waveguide using hybrid organic-inorganic sol-gel

Abstract

Optical waveguides are structures that confine and direct optical signals in a region of higher effective index than its surrounding media. For integrated optics and photonic applications, it is often of importance to prepare waveguides in the form of thin film and channel structures. Hybrid sol-gel material is one of the interesting material in waveguide fabrication as it possess advantages such as low processing temperature, low fabrication cost, and ability of refractive index tuning. Main novelty of this research lies in the development of VTES based optical waveguides. Moreover, refractive index of selected material can be easily tuned by adjusting composition of TTBu in the synthesization stage. Behavior of light propagation and the confinement of light in a hybrid VTES based optical waveguide had been investigated. The characteristics of the waveguide had been simulated by BeamPropTM to obtain the optimum structure for waveguide fabrication. Planar slab waveguides and single mode straight waveguides had been fabricated using low cost photolithographic techniques and wet chemical etching processes. The properties of the hybrid sol-gel material and the fabricated waveguides had been characterized. The experimental results have demonstrated optical waveguiding in the sol-gel material. Attenuation of single mode optical waveguides at 1310 nm and 1550nm with waveguide losses of 1.6dB/cm and 6.7 dB/cm have been obtained respectively. Even though the losses are rather high, the VTES based hybrid sol-gel material is suitable as a waveguiding material in the optical interconnect situations by optimizing the fabrication process.