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Micromachining of ridge optical waveguides on top of He+ -implanted Β-BaB2O4 crystals by femtosecond laser ablation

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Article number113121
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2006
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Applied Physics
Issue number11
Volume100
Number of pages5
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date13/12/06
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

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.