Design and fabrication of a glass waveguide optical add–drop multiplexer by use of an amorphous-silicon overlay distributed Bragg reflector

Abstract

We report the fabrication of a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) on a silver ion-exchanged glass waveguide with a patterned overlay of sputter-deposited amorphous silicon (a-Si). Using this high-refractive-index overlay DBR technology, we demonstrate a fully functional glass-integrated optic add-drop multiplexer (OADM). The OADM consists of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) containing overlay DBR gratings in both arms. The design, fabrication, and characterization procedures of the sputter-deposited a-Si overlay DBR and the ion-exchanged glass waveguide MZI are discussed in detail. The completed 3-cm-long OADM exhibited a 24-dB transmission dip with a 3-dB bandwidth of 0.5 nm. The 1-cm-long a-Si overlay DBR induced an additional attenuation of 1.2 dB. A simplified method for overlay DBR fabrication that utilizes a lift-off technique is also proposed and demonstrated.