Influence of the Proton Concentration on the Properties of the LiNbO3 and LiTaO3Crystals

摘要

Preparing series of waveguides with the same recipe, we faced the problem of arather poor reproducibility (up to 10% fluctuation of the index increase for step index waveguides). We were able to demonstrate that this phenomenon was due to an uncontrolled amount of water in the melt we used for the exchange. Preliminary experiment have been performed to test the influence of the Proton Exchange on the nonlinearity of the crystal and on its poling behavior. In both cases, an important influence has been observed.