Mev Ion Beam Induced Index of Refraction Changes in Layered GaAs/AlGaAs Waveguides

Abstract

Previously, we showed that localized optical modifications could be produced without subsequent post thermal annealing in selectively masked planar GaAs/Al₄Ga₆As waveguide structures using 10 MeV oxygen ions. In our present investigation, irradiation experiments were performed on masked GaAs/Al₄Ga₆As waveguide samples at 298 K using 10 MeV oxygen and 8 MeV carbon ions. The two ion incident energies were chosen to yield the maximum electronic stopping power near the interface septing the top cladding layer and the guiding layer. This localized modification process emphasizes the crucial role that the electronic energy transfer plays on the degree to which the refractive index of the guiding layer is altered. Propagation loss measurements on the fabricated channel waveguides were performed by end fire coupling a laser diode source at a wavelength of 1.3 μm. Observation of the extracted propagation loss values reveal that further optimization of the ion beam pmeters are required before practical applications can be achieved. The relative efficiency of the various ions to induce optically altered regions which serve as lateral confinement barriers of laser light shows that this fabrication process is sensitive to the ion beam current.