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 1.0×1016 ions/cm2 and 1.5 MeV energy were used for this aim. The waveguiding effect was investigated using the end-fire coupling technique.