Low Loss Sputtered Thin Films for Optical Circuits.

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An investigation was made on electrical and optical properties of sputtered tantalum oxide films with a view toward its possible use as a dielectric waveguide material. Electrical conductivity and breakdown strength were measured. The current increases exponentially with the voltage, besides it depends on the temperature strongly. The doping of nitrogen increases the conductivity. The temperature dependence of the breakdown strength is not significant. A nitrogen doped sample manifests a lower breakdown strength than doped one. The varjation of refractive index with wavelength for nitrogen doped and undoped samples were measured. The nitrogen doped sample shows the similar characteristics. The dopjng of nitrogen decreases the refractive index. The attenuation index could not be evaluated because of the small magnitude within the experimental errors. They may be below 10^<-3> in the visible region. An observation of properties of a waveguide was made. The linearly polarized He-Ne laser light was coupled into a TaOx thin film waveguide with coupling prisms. The propagation of the guided light depends on the polarization of the incident light.