Fabrication of optical ridge waveguide in lithium niobate by argon sputtering and titanium self-alignment in-diffusion

Abstract

We report a simple way of etching lithium niobate (LN) to build ridge waveguides. Argon plasma is used in an RF-sputtering chamber to etch the LN. The height of waveguide walls reaches 2.5 μm and a titanium self-alignment in-diffusion process is used to make the waveguide. Several diffusion times and different waveguides width are used to compare the mode properties and proportion of light that is confined in the ridge section of the waveguide. © 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).