Production of optical waveguide in planar glass substrate fabricated with femtoprint

Abstract

Femtosecond laser pulses are more and more spread for the micro/nano-machining of various materials. Bragg gratings are known to be good written within optical fibers using the point-by-point or line-by-line technique. The objective of our work is to produce Bragg grating sensors within planar glass substrates. To this aim, the synthesis of an optical waveguide in a glass substrate is a key parameter. Among the physical techniques that are available one of them is the utilization of a femtosecond laser. In this paper, we report our achievements obtained with the so-called Femtoprint machine, a commercial device created to engineer materials. We show the parameters that were used to produce waveguides in planar substrates. We show the characterization set-up that was implemented and report the first experimental results that were obtained.