A relative good and economical method has been presented to fabricate V-grooves on LiNbO₃ crystal for passive fiber alignment. It ha been experimentally investigated of excimer laser ablated V-grooves on LiNbO₃ crystal. Two excimer lasers were employed for comparison experiment with the wavelength of 308nm and 193nm respectively. It has been shown that 308nm wavelength performed a poor role in fabricating grooves on LiNbO₃ crystal, particularly on both ablation sped and surface quality, while 193nm wavelength showed excellent performance. The corresponding ablation threshold of LiNbO₃ crysatl at 193nm has been found to be as low as 0.5J/cm². At laser fluence of 3J/cm² and 1200 shots of laser irradiation, V-grooves with some 130 micrometers have been fabricated without visible damage near the grooves. Oxygen buffering atmosphere has been utilized for improving ablation surface cleansing.

Date Published: 1 July 2002
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 4688, Emerging Lithographic Technologies VI, (1 July 2002); doi: 10.1117/12.472360

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4688:
Emerging Lithographic Technologies VI
Roxann L. Engelstad, Editor(s)