Abstract

Plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) is a promising technique for growing intrinsically UV-photosensitive germanosilica waveguides. Conventional PECVD techniques have been used to fabricate low-loss waveguide devices since the late 1980's [1], but it is only recently that work has started on the development of UV-photosensitive PECVD glasses for direct writing, bragg gratings and UV-tuning applications [2]. Although high intrinsic photosensitivity in conventional PECVD germanosilica has been reported [3], its practical use has been limited by the high loss of this material due to N-H related absorption and film porosity. The loss can be reduced by high temperature annealing which, however, deletes the intrinsic photosensitivity, thus negating its potential advantage of PECVD over the more mainstream, flamehydrolysis technique.

© 1997 Optical Society of America