Highly transparent polycrystalline lanthanum-modified lead zirconate titanate (PLZT) thick films were prepared using aerosol deposition method (ADM) of calcined complex powders. Effects of incident angle of aerosol and particle size as well as annealing temperature on optical and electro-optic properties of films were investigated. The film with higher transparency was obtained with smaller particle, because the aggregation frequency of particles in aerosol decreased with reducing the particle size. The transparency of the films increased with decreasing the incident angle of aerosol. This is presumably due to the fact that the optimal incident angle of aerosol results in the reduction of impurity and pore, which makes the film to be denser micro-structurally. The XRD peaks of as-deposed films shifted to lower angle side, indicating that large compressive stress, which was generated by mechanical collision of particles, acted in the films. But the stress was eliminated through annealing process. The birefringence change in annealed film increased exponentially with an applied electrical field to reach 0.0036 at 100kV/cm. To make a multimode waveguide, the PLZT film with 22 μm thick was formed into a silicon groove, which was fabricated through anisotropic wet etching process. The far field profile of multimode optical wave transmitted through the fabricated PLZT waveguide was successfully observed and could be controlled with an applied electrical field.

Date Published: 31 August 2006
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 6327, Nanoengineering: Fabrication, Properties, Optics, and Devices III, 632717 (31 August 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.681364

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6327:
Nanoengineering: Fabrication, Properties, Optics, and Devices III
Elizabeth A. Dobisz; Louay A. Eldada, Editor(s)