The buried channel optical waveguides on glass by high electric field technique

摘要

The buried channel waveguides on optical glass is fabricated by a high electric field technique. The 900V voltage was applied on the glass to accelerate the field-driven ion exchange process by expeditiously replacing host sodium ions in the glass with silver ions. As a result, the lowest optical loss was achieved on waveguides fabricated at 350℃. The optical loss for channel waveguides was measured using the interference technique with a 0.6328μm He-Ne laser. And the loss of 0.30 dB/cm was obtained for channel waveguides of 20μm in depth, relatively low for waveguides of such depth at red wavelength. A nearly Gauss refractive index profile was observed from every channel waveguide fabricated.