The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Ion exchanged glass waveguides with efficient coupling to fibers and lasers
Author:	Hu, Shiqing
View Online:	njit-etd1992-080 ([iv], 42 pages ~ 1.0 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Electrical Engineering
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Jackel, Janet Lehr (Committee chair) Cornely, Roy H. (Committee member) Grebel, Haim (Committee member)
Date:	1992-01
Keywords:	Optical wave guides Optical communications Optical losses Couplings Lasers Ion exchange
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	To be of practical use in optical communications networks, optical components must have both low on-chip losses and efficient coupling to fibers, semiconductor lasers and detectors. In this thesis work two types of channel waveguides were designed and fabricated on BK7 glass substrate using a low-cost ion-exchange process. The first type of waveguide was formed in a simple sequence of ion-exchange and post-exchange annealing. These single mode waveguides had large mode size and were efficiently coupled to single mode fibers. The lowest loss achieved in fiber-guide direct coupling was 1.25 dB. The second type of waveguide was formed in a two-step inverse ion-exchange. The single mode waveguides formed in this way had small mode size and were compatible with lasers. The lowest loss achieved in laser-guide butt coupling was around 4 dB. The on-chip mode size transition from laser-compatible to fiber-compatible could be achieved by a thermal tapering annealing step.