Optical plane waveguide is wildly used in optical communications and sensors. There are many methods to fabricate the optical plane waveguide. The sol-gel coating method is one of the easiest ways. TiO₂ plane waveguides were fabricated on glass substrates in experiments. The fabrication methods are investigated under different conditions. There are many factors can influence the quality of the plane waveguide, such as the concentrations of sol-gel solutions, the pH value of the solutions, the dripping speed of the sol-gel drop, the heating process and so on. The characteristics of plane waveguides under different operating conditions are tested. The factors affecting the quality of the plane waveguide are analyzed. The experimental results show that the sol-gel coating method is a simple way to fabricate high quality plane waveguide under carefully controlling of the conditions.

Date Published: 8 January 2008
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 6838, Optoelectronic Devices and Integration II, 683823 (8 January 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.757955

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6838:
Optoelectronic Devices and Integration II
Xuping Zhang; Hai Ming; Maggie Yihong Chen, Editor(s)