Abstract

Optical waveguides are key components of optoelectronic devices. It is attractive to have an optical waveguide in which the waveguiding can be controlled electrically. Voltage-induced optical waveguides have been observed and discussed previously on LiNbO₃.^1,2 Here we report for the first time, to our knowledge, the electric-field-induced optical waveguide, or field-induced guide (FIG), in the GaAs/AIGaAs. Figure 1(a) shows a schematic diagram of the cross section of such a waveguide. A p-i-n multiple quantum-well (MQW) structure was grown by using molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). A proton ion implantation was carried out to convert the regions between the FIGs into semi-insulating material so that an electrical controllable channel was formed in the non-proton ion-implanted region because only this region contains an electrical field across the transverse (top-to-bottom) dimension.

© 1990 Optical Society of America