Temperature-insensitive Ge–B–SiO2 planar lightwave circuits by inductively coupled plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

Low-propagation-loss Ge–B–SiO2 planar waveguides have been achieved by inductively coupled plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The significant effects due to annealing temperature, hydrogen loading, and KrF excimer ultraviolet laser irradiation on the optical properties of Ge–B–SiO2 films have been investigated. A temperature-insensitive Mach–Zehnder interferometer-like optical filter has been demonstrated by means of a double-core fabrication method using 10GeO2–90SiO2 (10G90S) and 8GeO2–5B2O3–87SiO2 (8G5B87S) as two different waveguide cores. We have achieved less than 0.5 pm/°C temperature dependence of the central wavelength of the filter at 1550 nm while varying the temperature from −20 to 80 °C.