Pulsed laser deposition of active waveguides

On this report we deal with the deposition by means of pulsed laser deposition of tellurite, phosphate, chalcogenide glasses doped with rare earth ions. An excimer laser (KrF l=248 nm) is used. The deposition parameters are: laser fluence of 2-4 J/cm2, pulse repetition rate 10 Hz, substrate-target distance 6 cm. The vacuum chamber is preventively evacuated down to 10-5 Pa, then the ablation process is performed in vacuum or in a low pressure oxygen atmosphere for the phosphate glasses. The number of pulses is set to deposit layers with a few micron thickness. After the deposition, the morphological, structural, optical and guiding characteristics are analysed by different techniques like: Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Rutherford Backscattering (RBS), m-lines, photoluminescence etc. (Author)