Development of chalcogenide glasses for use in near-infrared planar waveguide applications

Summary form only given. Glasses exhibiting large, nonresonant nonlinearity are desirable for use in a range of optical systems based on fibers or planar films. Past efforts to understand the effect of compositional and processing-induced impurity variation, physical and optical property behavior of glasses in this ternary system have identified a series of glasses readily adaptable for use in planar geometry devices. Components based on our glasses have been shown to possess low absorption, high nonlinear index and photosensitivity when irradiated with near bandgap light. By tailoring the thermal, mechanical and optical properties of the bulk glasses used in the preparation of such multilayer components, robust, low loss devices can be realized. Further enhancement to the possible devices will result when a greater understanding exists as to what role the bulk glass/thin film structure plays on ultimate material performance.