Channel waveguides fabrication in Er3+-doped tellurite glass by ion beam irradiation

Abstract

Tellurite glasses are known to be highly promising materials for broadening the amplification bandwidth of Er³⁺-doped waveguide amplifiers, as they have large stimulated emission cross sections and broad emission bandwidth around the 1.55 micron wavelength. Furthermore, they exhibit a wide transmission range, the lowest vibrational energy among oxide glass formers, and good non linear properties. Nevertheless fabrication of waveguides in tellurite glasses appears to be a challenging task and so far it has been reported only in a few papers. Here we report on the development of a method based on high-energy ion beam irradiation to create active channel waveguides in a tungsten-tellurite glass doped with Er₂O₃. The waveguide stripes have been realized by 1.5 MeV N⁺ irradiation of the glass sample through a silicon mask with doses of 1.0 x 10¹⁶ ions/cm² using a 5 MeV Van de Graaff accelerator. Multimode light propagation has indeed been observed in these channels, confirming the effectiveness of this technique.