Chemical and physical aspects of sol—gel process for planar waveguides elaboration: application to zirconia waveguides

Sol—gel processing for zirconia planar waveguides elaboration is carefully described. Special attention is paid to chemical processing, deposition conditions and annealing treatment to achieve optical waveguide requirements. Such a well-controlled elaboration process allows the realization of low loss ZrO2 planar waveguides. Waveguide Raman spectroscopy is conducted to determine structural characteristics of zirconia films depending on the annealing temperature. The attenuation coefficient is lower than 1 dB/cm for amorphous waveguides and is about 2.5 dB/cm for crystallized waveguides at 632.8 nm. Finally, luminescence spectra of amorphous and crystallized Er3+-doped ZrO2 waveguides are presented.