Abstract

The ion implantation technique as fabrication method of optical waveguides has the following advantages: 1) the change of refractive index and its distribution can be controlled accurately by choosing the dose and the energy of implanted ions, 2) the higher refractive-index region can be buried in the interior of the substrate and the refractive index change is distributed along depth. Therefore, the scattering loss due to an imperfect interface at an abrupt boundary can be reduced. So far the formation of optical waveguides by ion implantation is realized¹⁾ in fused quartz, GaAs, CdTe, GaP and ZnTe. By using semiconductors there is a possibility of making an active optical circuits by this technique.

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