Abstract
Nano-scale optical circuits with core thickness of ${\sim} {\hbox {230}}$ nm and core width
of ${\sim} {\hbox {1}}\mu$m were fabricated and evaluated, using the photo-induced
refractive index variation sol-gel materials, whose refractive index gradually
increases by UV light exposure and baking. Propagation loss of linear waveguides
was 1.86 dB/cm for TE mode and 1.89 dB/cm for TM mode at 633 nm in wavelength,
indicating that there were small polarization dependences of ${\sim} {\hbox {0.03}}$ dB/cm. Spot sizes
of guided beams along core width direction and along core thickness direction
were, respectively, 0.6 and 0.3 $\mu$m for both TE mode and TM mode. Bending loss of S-bending waveguides
was reduced from 0.44 to 0.24 dB for TE mode with increasing the bending curvature
radius from 5 to 60 $\mu$m. Although the bending loss for TM mode was slightly higher than
that for TE mode, the difference was less than 10%. Branching loss of Y-branching
waveguides was reduced from 1.33 to 0.08 dB for TE mode, and from 1.34 to
0.12 dB for TM mode with decreasing the branching angle from 80$^{\circ}$ to 20$^{\circ}$. From these results, it is
concluded that the photo-induced refractive index variation sol-gel materials
can realize miniaturized optical circuits with sizes of several tens of microns
and guided beam confinement within a cross section area less than 1.0 $\mu$m$^{2}$ with small polarization dependences,
indicating potential applications to intra-chip optical interconnects.
© 2009 IEEE
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