All-UV written integrated glass devices including planar Bragg gratings and lasers

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Description/Abstract

Direct UV writing provides an attractive route towards low-cost integrated optical components in photosensitive glasses. The technique may be applied to a wide range of different geometries including silica-on-silicon wafers, compound oxide glasses, directly bonded glass composites and GLS. This presentation will review research in this area and present an overview of the activities in Southampton in this field. Recent developments of the UV writing technique have allowed the realisation of high quality Bragg gratings in silica-on-silicon by simultaneous writing of the channel waveguides and gratings (the direct grating writing technique). This approach together with wavelength detuning, allows an unprecedented range of wavelengths to be written under software control. Latest results will be presented covering laser operation in Neodymium doped channels.