A review on solution processing of chalcogenide glasses for optical components

Abstract

Solution-processing offers a pathway to fabricate complex chalcogenide structures for electronic, imaging and photonic applications. More importantly, it has benefits in flexibility and integration as compared to conventional methods. This paper reviews the fundamental physics and chemistry in the solution process, along with discussing recent examples of applying the solution method to fabricate high-quality optical and photonic components.

Structure and properties of spin-coated Ge_25S_75 chalcogenide thin films

“…The organic molecules are ionically bonded to the ChG clusters in form of alkyl ammonium chalcogenide salt. When annealing process decomposes these salts and subsequently evaporates organics molecules, the glass particles are forming more compact film [15]. This observation has been reported in the literature earlier for spin-coated As2Se3 and As2S3 films [24,25].…”

“…Spincoating and dip-coating deposition methods are frequently used for ChG thin films deposition [12][13][14][15][16][17], but these techniques are suitable only for basic material research and small scale production. Well known and managed printing [18] and coating [19] techniques allowing continuous deposition are gaining attention for large scale production purposes.…”

“…Thin films deposited by solution based techniques have been widely studied on arsenicbased ChGs [12][13][14][15][16][17], which limits their wide-spread application due to the arsenic toxicity. Germanium-based spin-coated thin films of Ge23Sb7S70 glass composition were successfully prepared [20], but further study of other germanium-based systems is needed to obtain plurality of different non-toxic optical materials prepared by solution based deposition techniques.…”

Electrospray Deposition of Uniform Thickness Ge₂₃Sb₇S₇₀ and As₄₀S₆₀ Chalcogenide Glass Films

“…Chalcogenide glasses (ChGs) are well-known for their broad infrared transmission and amenability to uniform thickness, blanket film deposition [1][2][3] . On-chip waveguides, resonators, and other optical components can then be formed from this film by lithography techniques, and then subsequent polymer coating to fabricate microphotonic devices [4][5] .…”

“…Generally, solutionderived films tend to result in higher loss of the light signal due to the presence of residual solvent in the film matrix 3 , but a unique advantage of solution-derived techniques over vapor deposition is the simple incorporation of nanoparticles (e.g., quantum dots or QDs) prior to spin-coating [8][9][10] . However, aggregation of nanoparticles has been observed in spin-coated films 10 .…”