Fabrication and characterisation of tellurite planar waveguides

Abstract

Tellurite glasses, which contain Tellurium dioxide as the main component, have some remarkable optical properties which are well recognised and exploited in the bulk optics and fibre fields. They include a high acousto-optic figure of merit, wide mid infrared transparency, the highest optical nonlinearity amongst oxides, and excellent rare earth hosting, etc. Despite these attractive properties, until now, no one has succeeded in fabricating low loss planar waveguides in these materials. This work develops high quality optical planar waveguides in Tellurium dioxide for the first time. The project investigates the materials science for optical Tellurium dioxide films and discovers an appropriate waveguide fabrication method. The thin films have been fabricated by reactive radio frequency magnetron sputtering using a Tellurium target in an oxygen and argon atmosphere. Propagation losses at 1550nm in the planar films are 0.1dB/cm or lower in stoichiometric composition. The properties of films have been also found to be stable with thermal annealing up to 300 degree Celsius. Plasma etching of tellurite glasses has been systematically studied. High quality etching of Tellurium dioxide and chalcogenide glass films has been demonstrated with a Methane/Hydrogen/Argon gas mixture. As a result, a fabrication recipe which produces low loss (0.1dB/cm) planar waveguides has been discovered. The nonlinear coefficient of the sputtered TeO2 has been characterised by self-phase modulation (SPM) experiments and the second order nonlinear coefficient has been measured to be around 25 times that of silica. Significant signal conversion, -4dB, has achieved with large bandwidth of 30nm in the four-wave mixing (FWM) experiment pumped at 1550nm in a slightly normal dispersion waveguide. Erbium doped Tellurium oxide thin films have also been fabricated by co-sputtering of Erbium and Tellurium targets into an Oxygen and Argon atmosphere. The obtained films have been found to have good properties for Erbium doped waveguide amplifiers. The Erbium concentration can be controlled within the range of interest with Erbium/Tellurium ratios ranging from 0.1% to 3% or more. The 1.5 micrometre photoluminescence properties of the films are excellent with effective bandwidth of more that 60nm and intrinsic lifetime of order of 3ms. Despite the fact that there was OH contamination in the films, single mode Erbium doped waveguide amplifiers with high internal gain have been successfully obtained. The 1480nm pumped amplifier achieved internal gain from below 1520nm to beyond 1600nm. The peak gain of 2.8dB/cm and 40nm 3dB gain bandwidth have been accomplished. These results are a major stepping stone towards ""system-on-chip"" optical applications for telecom and mid infrared optics given the multifunctional nature of tellurite materials. -- provided by Candidate. Show more