Low Loss Sputtered Thin Films for Optical Circuits.

研究了溅射氧化钽薄膜的电学和光学性质，以期将其用作介质波导材料。测量电导率和击穿强度。电流随电压呈指数增长，并且强烈地依赖于温度。氮的掺杂增加了导电性。击穿强度的温度依赖性不显著。氮掺杂样品表现出比掺杂样品更低的击穿强度。测量了掺氮和不掺氮样品的折射率随波长的变化。掺氮样品表现出类似的特性。氮的掺杂降低了折射率。由于在实验误差范围内的幅度很小，因此无法评估衰减指数。在可见光区，它们可能低于10埃<-3>。对波导的特性进行了观察。用耦合棱镜将线偏振的He-Ne激光耦合到TaOx薄膜波导中。被引导的光的传播取决于入射光的偏振。

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.