Abstract

Optical waveguides can be fabricated through different techniques including photolithography, ion implantation and laser beam writing.¹ Structural modifications in materials can be obtained by focusing near-1R femtosecond laser pulses. Because the femtosecond regime minimizes the heat affected zone and the absorption is strongly non- linear, cleaner, smaller and more repeatable structure feature sizes can be achieved.² Unamplified mode-locked Ti:Sapphire lasers have demonstrated the ability to micromachine optical materials.³ A variety of optical devices fabricated with this technique have been reported for a variety of optical glasses.^4-6 Amorphous chalcogenide glass (ChG) films are candidates for all-optical integrated circuits for the telecommunication industry^6,7 due to their excellent infrared transparency, large nonlinear refractive index, and low phonon energies. This paper describes for the first time to our knowledge, material ablation and corresponding structural changes in single and multilayer ChG thin films, using an unamplified Ti:Sapphire laser.

© 2002 Optical Society of America