Abstract

Proton exchange on lithium tantalate is rapidly becoming one of the most studied and exploited processes for nonlinear waveguide fabrication. Such waveguides find application in frequency converters and integrated lasers [1]. Conventional proton exchange is performed in liquid acid and followed by annealing to recover the nonlinear coefficient and reduce the losses. Recently, a new technology of proton exchange has been proposed and demonstrated on lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) [2]. It consists in performing proton exchange from a vapor-phase acid source. In this way, the lower acidity of the bath makes the process softer, the losses and the nonlinear coefficient are not degraded during the fabrication and, thus, no further annealing is required.

© 2000 IEEE