Ion beam irradiated channel waveguides in Er3+-doped tellurite glass

Erbium-doped tellurite glasses are of great interest for the fabrication of active integrated circuits because of their unique properties in terms of bandwidth and rare earth solubility. The fabrication of multimode channel waveguides in a glass of this family, namely, a sodium-tungsten-tellurite glass, is demonstrated using a high-energy ion beam irradiation technique. Nitrogen ions with dose of 1.0x10(16) ions/cm(2) and 1.5 MeV energy were used for this aim. The waveguiding effect was investigated using the end-fire coupling technique. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.