Abstract
In general, the optical waveguide in LiNbO3 integrated optics is a diffused type. Titanium indiffusion (TI) and proton exchange (PE) are well-known fabrication methods of a diffused waveguide. On the contrary, a ridge waveguide was fabricated by etching a LiNbO3 substrate[l,2]. Etching of the LiNbO3 substrate for the ridge structure was performed by a dry etching process, i.e., reactive ion etching (RIE), reactive ion-beam etching (RIBE), etc. A wet etching of LiNbO3 by using solution etchants, i.e., concentrated and dilute HF, HF:HNO3, etc., was nearly impossible to fabricate an integrated optic device, because of its low etch rate (several nm per minute) at room temperature and nonuniform etching[3]. Recently, it was reported that a proton-exchanged LiNbO3 has an etch rate about 1000 times larger than that of bulk LiNbO3. It also has a uniform etched surface in the 1HF:2HNO3 solution[4,5]. The method, wet etching after PE, is simple and has a larger etch rate than RIE or RIBE method which has an etch rate of the order of a few tens of nm per minute. In this paper, we report a novel fabrication method of a proton exchanged ridge waveguide by the wet etching of proton-exchanged LiNbO3.
© 1995 Optical Society of America
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