Femtosecond waveguide writing: a new avenue to three-dimensional integrated optics

Direct Writing in Polymers with Femtosecond Laser Pulses: Physics and Applications

“…A new approach for the local modification of transparent materials through nonlinear optical processes has been investigated due to extraordinarily high peak intensities of short pulses. A variety of materials including metals, dielectrics, polymers, and semiconductors have been successfully processed by the use of fs pulses [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Bulk refractive index change in transparent materials is found to be useful in applications of waveguides.…”

Ultrashort Laser Pulses Applications

“…Alternatively, electrons can be trapped in the UV or valence bands, modifying electronic properties of the material, and consequently changing its refractive index. These processes and similar ones happen in glasses (Courrol et al, 2008), crystals (Martynovich et al, 2008;Orlando et al, 2010), and polymers , and when these defects are created with spatial control inside the material, structures such as waveguides (Nolte et al, 2003), diffraction gratings (Hirao & Miura, 1998) and photonic devices (Florea & Winick, 2003;Minoshima et al, 2001) can be manufactured by the ultrashort pulses. Once again, all these processes benefit from the minimized heat generation that preserves the material properties in the surroundings of the created structures.…”

Femtosecond pulse written fiber gratings: a new avenue to integrated fiber technology

“…The modification is constrained to the focal area of the laser beam. Thus, by translating the sample, the 3-dimensional writing of waveguides is possible [27,28]. This allowed for the laser inscription of a large variety of tightly packed new integrated optical elements [29,30]; especially in active [31] and nonlinear crystals and glasses [32].…”

“…[27][28][29][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]). For nonphotosensitive bulk fused silica, three kinds of modifications can be induced by 100 fs short 800 nm pulses, depending on the intensity that is provided within the focal volume.…”