8th Pacific Rim Conference on Ceramic and Glass Technology

Symposium 25 Glasses for Optoelectronic and Optical Applications Photosensitivity in Glasses

Planar Chalcogenide Glass Microcavities: A Versatile Device Platform

Juejun Hu, Ian Matts, Anuradha M. Agarwal, Lionel C. Kimerling Microphotonics Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nathan Carlie, Laeticia Petit, Bogdan Zdyrko, Igor Luzinov, Kathleen Richardson Advanced Materials Research Laboratory, Clemson University KEYWORDS: optical resonator, germanium chalcogenide, arsenic

chalcogenide, glass processing, thermal reflow, sensor, photosensitivity, structural relaxation

Chalcogenide glasses are often regarded as the material choice for infrared optical applications due to their wide transparency window, high linear and nonlinear refractive indices, and almost unlimited capacity for alloying and application-specific property tailoring. Optical microcavities, on the other hand, have emerged as an important device for integrated photonics thanks to their unique ability to resonantly enhance optical field leading to increased photon-matter interactions. Infrared optical microcavities based on chalcogenide glass materials are thus highly desirable for an array of applications involving photon-matter interactions, including nonlinear optics, sensing and light emission.

We report the first realization of a range of planar chalcogenide microcavities, including micro-racetrack resonators, micro-ring resonators, and micro-disk resonators in germanium and arsenic chalcogenide glasses. The devices are processed using widely-available CMOS-line UV stepper lithography suitable for low-cost mass production. A low-temperature post-fabrication rapid thermal reflow process is shown

to reduce the optical loss induced by sidewall roughness scattering and improve resonator quality factor (Q-factor), and we demonstrate high-index-contrast, planar waveguide-coupled chalcogenide glass optical micro-disk resonators with a cavity Qfactor exceeding 2 105, the highest Q value reported in chalcogenide resonators.

The high Q optical resonance in these devices is exploited for biochemical sensing and glass property investigation applications. Prototypical sensor device is fabricated by integrating high-Q glass resonators with polymer microfluidic channels for analyte transport. The sensing mechanism is tested in two detection modes: refractometry and cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy. We measure a refractive index resolution of 8 10-7 RIU in aqueous solutions, featuring 10-fold limit of detection (LOD) improvement over commercial surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors. Preliminary cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy tests are performed at 1550 nm infrared wavelength, and the results show excellent agreement with those obtained from traditional infrared spectroscopy.

On the glass material property investigation side, high precision refractometry utilizing chalcogenide optical microcavities is employed to quantitatively evaluate the photosensitivity and structural relaxation kinetics in chalcogenide films. Photoinduced refractive index change in As2S3 films, both annealed and unannealed is measured as a function of exposure dose with unprecedented accuracy. Quantitative characterization of aging kinetics in germanium chalcogenide glasses has been carried out in a time frame as short as a few days, a process which traditionally had to be studied over several years. We discovered that structural relaxation (aging) in germanium chalcogenide glasses is a complex behavior consists of multiple processes with distinctively different kinetics and impacts on glass optical properties.