Chapter 5 Functional Waveguide Devices and Their Properties

Chapter 5 Functional Waveguide Devices

and their Properties

In this chapter, simple waveguide devices including Y-splitter and Mach-zehnder

structure were fabricated with femtosecond laser pulses, and some of their properties
were measured and analyzed. The work on Y-splitter and Mach-Zehnder structures
will be introduced in Sections 5.1 and 5.2 respectively.

5.1 Y-splitter
As mentioned in the previous chapters, an important advantage of femtosecond laser
writing is that different patterns can be written easily with controlling the movement of
the translation stage in the directions of x, y and z (in my work, I mainly consider the
movement in x and y directions). The layout of the Y-splitter is shown in Fig.5.1.
Splitter angle a is an important structure parameter, which mainly determines the
property of Y-splitter. With the contrast microscope observation, the cross-sectional
images of the input and output ends were presented in Fig.5.2. In current work, I have
fabricated Y-splitters with the splitting angles of 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.2, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5
and 3.0 respectively. The writing velocity is 50m/s, and the writing power is
13J/pulse. L is the whole length of the Y-splitter (10mm in this work).

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Fig.5.1 Layout of the Y-splitter

Fig.5.2 Cross-sectional images of the Y-splitter: (a) input and (b) output ends

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Fig.5.3 The output intensity fields from the Y-splitters with different splitting angles

Fig.5.3 gives the output fields from the output ends of the Y-splitters with different
splitter angles when test light were coupled into the input ends. The output distance d
between the two spots in the near-field output intensity distribution equals to that
between the ports of two branches of the Y-splitter.
Regarding the properties of the Y-splitters, splitting ratio and splitting loss will be
considered in the following.
Generally speaking, the splitting ratio is very sensitive to the symmetry of the two
branches. By writing with femtosecond laser pulses, the symmetry of the two branches
can be controlled easily, because the same fabrication condition will produce the
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waveguide with almost the same properties. Of course, it is still affected by the
stability of the laser pulses and the movement of the translation stage. In my work, all
the Y-splitters fabricated have the splitting ratio in the range of 1.06:1 ~ 1.3:1, and
most of them have a value of ~1.1:1. It can be said that the Y-splitters fabricated with
femtosecond laser writing show a good symmetry.
Another important parameter of Y-splitter is the splitting loss. Here, only the
additional splitting loss will be considered, which excludes the propagation loss of the
waveguide. The additional splitting loss was obtained by measuring the overall
transmission loss and comparing this loss to the propagation loss (~1dB/cm) through a
channel waveguide written with the same conditions. This loss is very sensitive to the
splitting ratio as shown in the curve in Fig.5.4. Obviously, the splitting loss increases
quickly with the increase of the splitter angle of the Y-splitter, i.e. the output
performance becomes worse.

Fig.5.4 The additional splitting loss V.S. the splitting angle

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5.2 Mach-Zehnder Structure

Similarly with the fabrication of the Y-splitter, Mach-Zehnder Structures (shown in
Fig.5.5) were written inside the Lithium Niobate substrate. Accordingly, in order to
analyze the performance of the M-Z structure, the output field from one end of the
structure was measured when the test light was input from the other end. The input and
output intensity fields of the Mach-Zehnder structures at different splitting angles (0.4,
0.6, 0.8 and 1.0) are shown in Fig.5.6. L is the whole length of the M-Z structure
(30mm in this work).

Fig.5.5 Layout of the Mach-Zehnder structure

Fig.5.6 The input and output intensity fields of the Mach-Zehnder

structures with different splitting angles

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In output field measurement experiments, the test light was coupled into one end of
the M-Z structure, and divided into two almost equal branches after the first Y-splitting
structure. The light propagated along these two branches respectively. Finally, they
were coupled into one channel again with interference after the inverse Y-splitting
structure. During this procedure, the loss mainly consists of propagation loss along the
waveguide channel and splitting losses at the two splitting structures. Excluding the
propagation loss of the waveguide, the extra loss (splitting losses at two Y-splitters)
was obtained by measuring the overall transmission loss and comparing this loss to the
propagation loss (~1dB/cm) through a channel waveguide written with the same
conditions. This loss is very sensitive to the splitting ratio as shown in the output field
in Fig.5.6 and the curve in Fig.5.7. Obviously, the extra loss increases quickly with the
increase of the splitter angle.

Fig.5.7 The extra loss V.S. the splitting angle

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5.3 Conclusion
In this chapter, Y-splitter and Mach-zehnder structures were fabricated with
femtosecond laser pulses, and some of their properties were measured and analyzed.
The results obtained from this work provide a high possibility that the femtosecond
laser writing technology might be applied in flexible functional waveguide devices
fabrication.

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