Abstract

Silver ion exchanged optical waveguides have become of increasing interest in recent years. Continuing research in this area has led to improvements in optical performance along with many variations on the fabrication technique.^1,2 Most of these techniques which yield low loss guides use a molten liquid source of silver. Reported here are the first ion implanted Ag waveguides in soda-lime glass. The ion implantation minimizes contamination from source material and allows considerable control over the placement of silver in the substrate, thus making reproducible characteristics easier to obtain. Subsequent thermal diffusion under bias was used to complete the ion exchange process and redistribute the silver. Since the implant creates an initial depletion of Ag at the surface, buried guides were possible.

© 1989 Optical Society of America