High-quality chalcogenide glass waveguide fabrication by hot melt smoothing and micro-trench filling

Abstract

We propose a fabrication method for chalcogenide glass (ChG) waveguides based on hot melt smoothing and micro-trench filling. ChGs has low melting points and good flowability. Experiments show that this method can realize high quality As2S7 glass waveguides with reverse ridge structures. The attenuations of the fundamental quasi-TE mode and quasi-TM mode are 0.1 and 0.9 dB/cm, respectively. This method avoids fabrication processes, such as photolithography, lift-off, and dry or wet etching that are directly applied to the ChG films. It provides a simple way to fabricate high quality ChG waveguides, which have great potential for applications in integrated nonlinear optical devices.

Investigation of amorphous-crystalline transformation induced optical and electronic properties change in annealed As50Se50 thin films

“…The various characteristic parameters should be in their stable form while using them for various applications which can be done by thermal annealing at different temperatures (Sahoo et al 2020a), bombarding with energetic ions (Behera et al 2020), laser irradiation (Aparimita et al 2020a), gamma and X-ray irradiation (Sharma et al 2020) and many other suitable techniques. The chalcogenide thin films switched locally by means of structural, optical and electrical parameters upon such treatments and found important applications in optoelectronic devices, solar cells, infrared detectors, optical biosensors, low loss waveguides, optical switches, fibers and many more (Manivannan and Noyel Victoria 2018;Purohit et al 2015;Xu et al 2014;Zhai et al 2016;Anne et al 2009;Sojka et al 2012). The reason behind such numerous applications of these materials lies in their linear-nonlinear optical, thermal, structural, electrical properties like high IR transmission, low phonon energy, large nonlinear susceptibility etc.…”

Nonlinear optical properties of chalcogenide glass waveguides fabricated by hot melt smoothing and micro-trench filling

“…22,23) In our previous work, we proposed and demonstrated a fabrication method for on-chip integrated ChG devices based on the material properties of low melting temperature and good flowability when they are melted. 24) The waveguide structures were realized by melting the ChG films and making ChG materials fill into micro-trenches. This method avoids lithography, etching or lift-off processes on the ChG films, providing a simple way to realize high quality ChG waveguides.…”

“…The fabrication process of the long ChG waveguide samples is similar to our previous work. 24) Firstly, microtrenches are fabricated on the silica substrate by electron beam lithography (EBL) and inductively coupled plasma etching. Here, EBL replaces photolithography in the previous work since narrower waveguides are preferred to improve the nonlinear optical properties.…”

Physical Mechanism and Response Characteristics of Unsaturated Optical Stopping-Based Amorphous Arsenic Sulfide Thin-Film Waveguides

“…A prominent advantage of some chalcogenide glasses is that their photoelectric characteristics can be flexibly tailored by adjusting stoichiometric composition [15]. Arsenic sulfide (As 2 S 8 ) is a typical kind of such composition-adjustable chalcogenide glasses, contributing significantly to fabrication of optical fibers and waveguides [16]- [23] utilized in optoelectronics, photonics and metamaterials [24]- [27]. Average coordination number of the As 2 S 8 is relatively low while its defect density in chemical bonds is relatively high, leading to more sublevels in the bandgap of this material.…”