Subsurface disorder and electro-optical properties of proton-exchanged LiNbO 3 waveguides produced by different techniques

S. M. Kostritsky (1) , Y. N. Korkishko (1) , V.A. Fedorov (1) , V. P. Mitrokhin (1) , O. G. Sevostyanov (2) , I. M. Chirkova (2) , O Stepanenko (3) , M de Micheli (3)

1 RPC Optolink
2 KemSU - Kemerovo State University
3 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée

It has been established, that proton-exchanged LiNbO3 waveguides have a marked subsurface layer with structural disorder inducing degradation of electro-optical properties of these waveguides. At the same time, such a subsurface disorder is found to be less pronounced in soft proton-exchanged (SPE) waveguides in comparison with annealed proton-exchanged (APE) ones. The experimental samples of phase modulators fabricated by SPE technique exhibit a better electro-optical efficiency compared to the LiNbO3 modulators produced by the standard and improved APE techniques.

Mots clés: Lithium Niobate; electro-optic effect; proton exchange; Optical waveguides

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

S. M. Kostritsky, Y. N. Korkishko, V.A. Fedorov, V. P. Mitrokhin, O. G. Sevostyanov, et al.. Subsurface disorder and electro-optical properties of proton-exchanged LiNbO 3 waveguides produced by different techniques. Journal of the European Optical Society : Rapid publications, 2014, 9, pp.14055. ⟨10.2971/jeos.2014.14055]⟩. ⟨hal-01185478⟩