Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Article number | 113121 |
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 2006 |
<mark>Journal</mark> | Journal of Applied Physics |
Issue number | 11 |
Volume | 100 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Publication Status | Published |
Early online date | 13/12/06 |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
We report on a technique for the fabrication of ridge optical waveguides on top of Β- BaB2 O4 (BBO) crystals. The BBO crystals were first implanted by He+ ions to form planar optical waveguides. In the second step, the femtosecond laser ablation technique was employed for micromachining of ridge-type optical waveguides. A thorough study of material-specific ablation parameters for BBO has been performed in order to achieve ablated structures with smooth sidewalls. A further process of Ar+ ion smoothing in a plasma chamber was used to reduce the sidewall roughness of the ablated ridges from 75 to 35 nm root mean square. We demonstrated optical waveguiding in these femtosecond-ablated plasma-treated waveguides and measured total propagation losses of less than 10 dBcm at 532 nm, making them suitable for nonlinear- and electro-optical applications.