Low loss deep glass waveguides produced with dry silverelectromigration process

摘要

We report a simple but effective technology adopted to fabricatelow-loss channel waveguides on a specially chosen glass substrate codename SBS450 without the presence of molten chemicals or liquidsolutions. This technique encompasses a dry ion electromigration processthat totally eliminate the needs of evaporating separate gold oraluminum film electrodes onto both sides of glass. In contrast toearlier ion exchange waveguides reported, a relatively high electricalfield of 545 V/mm was applied to the glass to speed up theelectromigration process and most important of all, to prevent silverions that were driven into the glass from reducing into silver atom, amajor contributor to waveguide loss. The channel waveguides thusfabricated showed no discolors or cracks, while the attenuation losseswere later measured to be less than 0.2 dB/cm, using our 0.6328 μmHe-Ne laser edge-coupling setup