Fabrication Of Single-mode Waveguides Research Articles

Modeling, Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of Ultra-High Bandwidth 3-D Glass Photonic Substrates

This article presents the modeling, design, fabrication, and characterization of ultra-low loss 3-D optical waveguides integrated on a glass photonic substrate. A novel, single-step process was developed using moving-mask lithography to fabricate a single-mode optical waveguide with a built-in turning mirror capable of achieving 40° or 45° turns for vertical grating couplers or photodetectors, respectively. Planar alignment of the waveguide to fiber interfaces enable passive alignment of the fibers, contributing to system cost reduction. An optical path with 0.81 dB loss from fiber to die was obtained from optical modeling, while the fabrication of single-mode waveguides with built-in total internal reflecting mirrors at <0.2 μm uniformity and <1° angular control was demonstrated.

Modeling, Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of Ultra-high Bandwidth 3D Glass Photonic Substrates

This paper presents the modeling, design, fabrication, and characterization of ultra-low loss 3D optical waveguides integrated on a glass photonic substrate. A novel, single-step process was developed using moving mask lithography to fabricate a single mode optical waveguide with a built-in turning mirror capable of making 40° or 45° turns for vertical grating couplers or photodetectors, respectively. Planar alignment of the waveguide to fiber interfaces enable passive alignment, contributing to system cost reduction. An optical path with 1.1 dB loss from fiber to die was obtained from optical modeling, while the fabrication of single mode waveguides with built-in mirrors at <1° angular control was demonstrated.

A Mach-Zehnder interferometer based on silicon oxides for biosensor applications

Integrated optical devices have been increasingly interested in biosensor applications including environmental pollution, biological process and medical diagnostics. Integrated optics allows high-detection sensitivity to be achieved using optical transduction techniques in a microfluidic format. Among different transduction techniques, a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) has advantage of its inherent high sensitivity and accuracy. The evanescent wave of an optical waveguide interacts with an adjacent layer, and this can be the basis of the recognition of biomolecules. In recent years, silicon dielectrics as potential materials have been attracted in an integrated optics. The refractive index of these silicon-based materials can be easily adjusted continuously over a wide range between 1.45 (SiO 2) and 1.97 (SiO). This comes to be very attractive in terms of design and fabrication of single-mode waveguides. In this article, we tried to realize the Mach-Zehnder interferometer sensor based on silicon oxides, and the refractive index of the oxides was controlled by the oxygen concentration to achieve the single-mode behavior of a total internal reflection (TIR) waveguide. We have performed to verify the feasibility of the MZI sensor for the direct detection of immunoreactions.

Solgel grating waveguides for distributed Bragg reflector lasers

Solgel grating waveguides and their application to the fabrication of external-cavity distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers are demonstrated. A new composition of aluminosilicate material is developed for the fabrication of single-mode waveguides and Bragg reflectors. An average loss of <0.2 dB/cm is measured in the single-mode waveguides at 1550 nm. The reflectors show filtering greater than 97% near 1530 nm, with a bandwidth of ~0.6 nm . The Bragg reflectors are used as feedback resonators for DBR lasers. Single-mode lasing with a sidemode suppression of better than 25 dB is demonstrated.

Low-loss, single-mode, organic polymer waveguides utilizing refractive index tailoring

Low-loss, single-mode optical waveguides have been fabricated from photopolymerizable acrylic monomers. The material system consists of a low-index cladding resin and a high-index core resin. The two resins are miscible so that precise control over the refractive index can be obtained. This allows the fabrication of single-mode waveguides with specific cross-sectional dimensions. One advantage of this is the ability to fabricate waveguides with high coupling efficiencies to other devices such as optical fiber or semiconductor lasers. The materials adhere to a wide variety of substrates and exhibit average waveguide losses of 0.56 dB/cm at 1300 nm for single-mode waveguides. Details of the fabrication procedure, index of refraction tailoring technique, and waveguide loss data are presented.