The Photochemical Generation of Planar Waveguides in Sol-Gel Glasses

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9361852 Mendoza The commercial realization of the promise of integrated optics technology depends on the establishment of a cost-effective, reliable method of fabricating active and passive waveguiding structures in a thin film format. Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to investigate the development of a novel photolithographic technique that uses commonly available materials, and straightforward processing, to produce both active and passive waveguides in silica-based sol-gel films. The proposed technique offers the possibility of "writing" permanent index variations of up to 0.1 into the silica matrix. Furthermore, the same technique can be used to produce waveguides with nonlinearities in refractive index and transmissivity. During the proposed Phase I effort, POC will prove the practicality of this technique by using it to generate examples of planar waveguides, channel waveguides, and active and passive devices such as splitters, combiners, directional couplers, and Mach-Zender interferometers on a single glass substrate. ***