Fabrication and optical properties of sol-gel derived organic-inorganic photosensitive ridge waveguide structure doped with disperse red 13

Disperse red 13 (DR13) azoaromatic chromophores were embedded into the sol-gel derived organic-inorganic hybrid waveguide films with photosensitive properties. Third-order nonlinear properties of the hybrid waveguide films were investigated by using a z-scan technique under a femtosecond laser pulse at the wavelength of 800 nm. Planar waveguide properties and changes of absorbance of the hybrid films under an irradiation of the non-polarized UV light at 365 nm were also characterized by a prism coupling technique and UV-visible spectroscopy, respectively. Advantages for fabrication of the functional ridge waveguide structure were demonstrated by a UV-cured imprint technique, and the results indicate that the fabrication process is simple and cost-effective. Morphological and surface profile properties of the ridge waveguide structure were observed by scanning electron microscopy and the propagation loss of the ridge waveguide structure was also measured by a cut-back method. All these results indicate that the as-fabricated waveguides are promising candidate for integrated optics applications.