Er3+ doped Silica-on-Silicon using fs-laser doping process for Integrated Waveguide Amplifier Platforms

Rare earth doped waveguide amplifier (EDWA) on silica-on-silicon (SOS) platform are area of great interest for silicon integrated photonics. We report the fabrication of erbium doped silica-on-silicon (SOS) wafer-scale platforms for integrated waveguide amplifier and laser application. We used a method named- ultrafast laser plasma doping (ULPD) process on silica- on-silicon substrates using erbium doped zinc-sodium tellurite glasses (TZN) as targets. The influence of laser energy on the doping process was studied in terms of the refractive index of the waveguides formed and their photoluminescence properties. Planar slab waveguides of refractive index1.64 at 633 nm and characteristic photoluminescence lifetimes of erbium at 1535 nm wavelength emission, varying from 13.38 ms to 10.52 ms were obtained. We used higher repetition rate (10 kHz) amplified Ti-Sapphire laser with pulse duration of 45 fs for faster and efficient growth of active waveguide layer in this research.