UV-light-imprinted surface, ridge, and buried sol-gel glass waveguides and devices on silicon

New processes are developed to produce surface, ridge and buried sol-gel glass waveguides by photo-inscription using a ultraviolet light source. The fabricated waveguides demonstrate very low propagation losses (approximately 0.1 dB/cm). Several integrated optical devices such as cascaded Y-branch power splitters, directional couplers, Mach-Zehnder interferometer wavelength division multiplexers have also been produced.