Design and fabrication of GeAsSeS chalcogenide waveguides with thermal annealing

We reported a chalcogenide glass-based rib waveguide fabricated using photolithography and dry etching method. A commercial software(COMSOL Multiphysics) was used to optimize the waveguide structure and the distribution of the fundamental modes in the waveguide based on the complete vector finite component. We further employed thermal annealing to optimize the surface and sidewalls of the rib waveguides. It was found that the optimal annealing temperature for Ge As Se S films is 220℃, and the roughness of the films could be significantly reduced by annealing. The zero-dispersion wavelength(ZDW) could be shifted to a short wavelength around ~2.1 μm via waveguide structural optimization, which promotes supercontinuum generation with a short wavelength pump laser source. The insertion loss of the waveguides with cross-sectional areas of 4.0 μm×3.5 μm and 6.0 μm×3.5 μm was measured using lens fiber and the cut-back method. The propagation loss of the 220℃ annealed waveguides could be as low as 1.9 d B/cm at 1550 nm.