Abstract

Siloxane Polymer exhibits low loss in the 800-1500 nm range which varies between 0.01 and 0.66 dB cm⁻¹. It is for such low loss the material is one of the most promising candidates in the application of engineering passive and active optical devices [1, 2]. However, current polymer fabrication techniques do not provide a methodology which allows high structurally solubility of Er³⁺ ions in siloxane matrix. To address this problem, Yang et al.[3] demonstrated a channel waveguide amplifier with Nd³⁺-complex doped polymer, whilst Wong and coworkers[4] employed Yb³⁺ and Er³⁺ co-doped polymer hosts for increasing the gain. In some recent research we demonstrated pulsed laser deposition of Er-doped tellurite glass thin films on siloxane polymer coated silica substrates[5]. Here an alternative methodology for multilayer polymer-glass composite thin films using Er³⁺ -Yb³⁺ co-doped phosphate modified tellurite (PT) glass and siloxane polymer is proposed by adopting combinatorial pulsed laser deposition (PLD).

© 2011 Optical Society of America