The use of ion beam techniques for the fabrication of integrated optical elements

Active and passive optical waveguides are fundamental elements in modern telecommunications systems. A great number of optical crystals and glasses were identified and are used as good optoelectronic materials. However, fabrication of waveguides in some of those materials remains still a challenging task due to their susceptibility to mechanical or chemical damages during processing. Ion beam has been used for such purposes, along with other emerging techniques, like direct pulsed laser writing. Passive and active planar and channel optical waveguides, and optical Bragg gratings were fabricated in various glasses (like Er: TeO 2 -WO 3 glass) and undoped and doped crystals, Bi 4 Ge 3 O 12 , Bi 12 GeO 20 ) using masked or unmasked macrobeams or microbeams of light and medium-sized ions (C, N, O) in the 1.5 – 11 MeV energy range. Functionality of the optical elements was tested by m-line spectroscopy and end fire coupling technique. Structural changes in the implanted samples were studied by various optical microscopic techniques, spectroscopic ellipsometry, Rutherford backscattering and microscopic Raman spectroscopy. The results show that it is possible to produce integrated optical elements of unique properties using ion beam techniques.