Rare-earth-doped fluoride-glass channel waveguides for optical amplification

This paper focuses on the preparation and optical characterization of rare-earth-doped fluoride glass channel waveguides. Fluoride glasses are materials with unique optical properties. Because of low phonon energies of the host, emissions of rare-earth ions show higher quantum efficiencies in fluoride glasses as compared to silicates. Waveguides can be prepared by two methods. First, fluorine - chlorine anionic exchange at the surface of fluorozirconate glass, which results in gradient-index waveguides. Second, physical vapor deposition of Pb-Zn-Ga fluoride glass, which allows the preparation of step-index waveguides. Both systems can be doped with rare-earth ions. The spectroscopy of Nd3+ and Er3+ ions in both waveguide configurations is investigated and the most recent results on optical amplification around 1.05 mu m and 1.54 mu m are presented.