OAM-RC

Abstract

There are presented the fabrication and characterization of planar waveguides in porous silicon. These results are extended to the visible spectrum by oxidation of the silicon to silica. Porous silicon is a novel material with potential applications in photonics due to its relatively easy manufacture. Its optical performance however, still needs to be improved before commercial applications become possible. An attempt is made to add new knowledge on this material. For this purpose, waveguides of 1.5 cm long were prepared in p-type silicon substrates by a double step anodization process. The influence of thickness of core and cladding layers on guiding properties of oxidized porous silicon waveguides was studied. The thickness of all samples was checked by measuring their porosity. The refractive index of the samples has been calculated before and after oxidation by the Bruggeman method. Optical losses were measured in the visible range (λ = 633 nm) by end fire coupling method. The results have shown that by increasing the guiding and cladding layer thickness, optical loss decrease. The reason could be the current density fluctuations during anodization process and light scattering from rough interfacial surfaces, which exist between guiding and cladding layers. The multilayer planar waveguides were made by careful modification of the anodization time. By this method, significant improvements of the waveguide preparation and waveguide characteristics were obtained.

Keywords

Porous silicon, Waveguide, Oxidation, Optical loss, Multilayer planar waveguide.

Citation

I. HOSEINZADEH, R. S. DARIANI, Measurement of optical loss in oxidized multilayer planar porous silicon waveguides, Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials - Rapid Communications, 1, 9, September 2007, pp.471-476 (2007).

Submitted at: Aug. 6, 2007

Accepted at: Aug. 15, 2007