IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2000

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Zeroth-Order Half-Wave Plates of LiNbO3 for Integrated Optics Applications at 1.55 m

A. M. Radojevic, Student Member, IEEE, R. M. Osgood, Jr., Fellow, IEEE, M. Levy, A. Kumar, and H. Bakhru
AbstractIn this letter, we report on fabrication and characterization of the first zeroth-order half-wave plates of LiNbO3 obtained by crystal ion slicing (CIS). Polarization rotation was demonstrated in 10- m-thick freestanding LiNbO3 films with 30-dB conversion ratios and negligible material loss. Polarization-independent performance was demonstrated in a hybrid-optic device comprising a CIS wave plate integrated with single-mode silica-based channel waveguides. Index TermsIntegrated optics, ion implantation, lithium compounds, optical polarization, thin-film devices.

I. INTRODUCTION OLARIZATION-INDEPENDENT performance is one of the key issues in designing integrated optic devices for telecom applications, such as the arrayed waveguide grating routers [1]. The ability to control the state of polarization is also important for achieving optimal performance in electrooptic modulators [2], as well as in hybrid magnetooptic isolators [3]. Integrated passive polarization converters have been realized in different material systems and by using various techniques [4], [5]. However, these approaches do not lend themselves easily to hybrid integration, and are often complex and difficult to implement. A very practical approach in addressing these points is in the TETM polarization mode conversion via thin and compact ) plates inserted in grooves etched or sawed half-wave ( in an integrated optic device. This has already been implemented in silica-based planar waveguides where 14.5- m-thick plates of polyimide were used to achieve zeroth-order low-loss polarization-independent operation at 1550 nm with TETM conversion ratios 20 dB [6]. Despite its importance, it would be desirable to develop ultrathin zeroth-order plates of materials other than polyimide. Specifically, polyimide plates are hygroscopic and, consequently, highly susceptible to environmental changes, which, in turn, limits their long-term performance and stability. In addition, the use of materials with larger birefringence would allow for realization of even thinner zeroth-order retarders, further reducing the diffraction losses that normally become significant in waveguides with
Manuscript received June 19, 2000; revised August 25, 2000. This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Contract F49620-99-1-0038. A. M. Radojevic and R. M. Osgood, Jr. are with the Microelectronics Sciences Laboratories, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 USA (e-mail: tony@cumsl.ctr.columbia.edu). M. Levy is with the Department of Physics, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931 USA. A. Kumar and H. Bakhru are with the Department of Physics, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222 USA. Publisher Item Identifier S 1041-1135(00)10482-3.

smaller guided mode size. Finally, additional improvement in polarization mode conversion ratios would also be beneficial. In this letter, we report on fabrication and characterization plates of LiNbO obtained of 10- m-thick zeroth-order by means of the recently developed technique of crystal ion slicing (CIS) [7][9]. Using this technique, we showed earlier that thin sheets of LiNbO can be fabricated with preserved bulk single-crystal material properties, including the large birefringence required for thin wave-plate design, thus making a realization of ultracompact integrated LiNbO polarization mode converters possible. Although it was previously demonstrated that CIS films could be fabricated with an arbitrary crystal orientation [8], this is, in fact, the first successful application of the technique to X-cut LiNbO substrates. II. DEVICE FABRICATION When an arbitrarily polarized wave is incident upon a birefringent crystal plate whose optic axis lies in the plane normal to the propagation direction, the two orthogonal polarization components obtained by projecting the input field onto ordinary and extraordinary crystal polarization directions will traverse different optical paths and, thus, undergo different phase shifts. Neglecting the Fresnel interference effects, the optical retardance between the ordinary and extraordinary wave in an X-cut sheet of LiNbO of thickness can be expressed as , where and are the ordinary and extraordinary refractive indexes, respectively, and is the LiNbO retarder at 1550 nm, and using wavelength. For a the room-temperature Sellmeier fit for refractive indexes of a congruently melt LiNbO [10], the above expression results in m. Note that this result a nominal plate thickness of presents an order of magnitude reduction in thickness as complates made on quartz, and 40% pared to the zeroth-order improvement over the polyimide wave plates [6]. The thin films of LiNbO were fabricated from congruently melt X-cut optic-grade wafers. The samples were implanted with He at an energy of 3.8 MeV. The corresponding ion range (and, thus, the approximate thickness of the films to be obtained) is 10 m [7], [8], a number close to the design value of 10.6 m. Different ion doses were employed at this implantation energy. A previously reported dose of 5 10 cm , typically used for fabrication of Z-cut LiNbO films [7][9], was too high for the X-cut crystals and resulted in surface cracking during implantation. We were able to eliminate this effect by reducing 10 cm . Although this the total implantation dose to 2 value is close to that at which cracking may develop, repeated implantation with the same dose showed that this process was

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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2000

in the crack-free process window. The implanted wafers were cut in 3 mm 4 mm rectangles with the optic axis oriented at 45 5 . Two sets of CIS films were fabricated. In the first case, rapid thermal annealing in conjunction with wet chemical etching was used to produce 10 m-thick films [7], [8]. For the second set, the implanted samples were placed on a doped (dummy) Si wafer with the implanted side facing the Si surface, and then heated to a temperature of 100 C, causing a pyroelectric charge build-up in LiNbO . We believe that the two materials became electrostatically bonded through a thin native SiO layer at the interface. Rapid thermal annealing at 550 C for 5 s was then applied, resulting in 10- m-thick CIS films obtained by thermal snapoff [8]. The undercut surface of these films was analyzed with a scanning electron microscope and was found to have a roughness of 100 nm (peak-to-peak). Finally, post liftoff annealing was used to remove the residual damage associated with ion implantation and mechanical stress in the films [9]. III. DEVICE EVALUATION The fabricated CIS films were probed with a continuous wave (CW) laser, tunable from 1470 to 1560 nm. Owing to their somewhat simplified fabrication procedure, only the films obtained by thermal snapoff were characterized. The laser fiber output beam was collected with a 20 objective and passed through a standard quartz half-wave plate and a linear polarizer ( 40 dB extinction at 1500 nm). Two different configurations were employed, one for measuring the plate parameters, and the other to demonstrate the polarization mode conversion for a LiNbO plate inserted into an integrated guiding structure. In the first case, the collimated beam exiting the polarizer was focused with a 40 objective onto a CIS film and collected with another 40 objective positioned behind the film. The film was center mounted on a vertical rotation stage. The focal spot diameter at the film surface was 8.5 m, a value comparable to the mode size of standard optical waveguides. The light coming from the second objective was then passed through an analyzer ( 34-dB extinction) and focused onto a photodetector. In the second configuration, the linearly polarized beam was coupled into a polarization-maintaining single-mode fiber and then end fire coupled into a straight single-mode silica waveguide residing 30 m beneath the surface of a 2-cm-long silica-on-silicon optical chip provided by PIRI Inc., Columbus, OH. The chip contained a total of six parallel waveguides spaced 250 m apart, with the first guide 115 m away from the edge of the chip. The waveguides had an index contrast of 0.7% relative to the surrounding glass cladding. In the middle of the optical chip, a 21- m-wide and 155- m-deep slot was cut for insertion of the CIS films. Note that these slot dimensions are typical of those used for polyimide wave plates; in fact, a narrower, 12- m-wide slot could be used for the thinner CIS retarder. The uncertainty in the orientation of the film optic axis was 5 since the sample was cut mechanically; the CIS plates were, therefore, attached to the outer perimeter translation platform of a rotation stage mounted on an in order to facilitate optical alignment. The light emanating from the guides was collected with a 40 objective followed

Fig. 1. Polarization rotation in zeroth-order =2 plates of CIS LiNbO . (a) Optic axis at 0 (), 5 ( ), and 10 ( ), respectively, relative to the input polarization. (b) Transmission through a CIS film at 45 () and without it ( ).

by an analyzer and a beamsplitter. A fraction of light ( 5%) was imaged with an IR camera to assure waveguiding, while the remaining part was focused onto a photodetector. The linear polarization rotation due to the CIS films was initially demonstrated using the first configuration and for wavelengths spanning the tunable range of our laser probe; the results obtained at 1500 nm are presented in Fig. 1. Here, the output light intensity is plotted against the analyzer angle for three different polarization states of the input beam relative to the oriplate, entation of the film optic axis. As expected, for a , the Fig. 1 shows that when the plate is rotated by an angle . A linear dependence of the output polarization rotates by output polarization direction is obtained throughout the 45 range of with a measured slope of 1.98 0.02 [see Fig. 1(a) inset]. Fig. 1(b) shows data obtained for the CIS retarder at 45 resulting in a full 90 rotation of the input polarization field. The excess transmission loss was estimated to be less than 0.1 dB. Although our tunable laser allowed access to wavelengths ranging from 1470 to 1560 nm, the spectral measurement of the optical system used to characterize the films showed that its ability to linearly polarize light was wavelengthdependent: at 1500 nm, the light was polarized by 38 dB (peak), while at 1550 nm, a value of 20 dB was obtained. This effectively limited our ability to accurately characterize the fabricated CIS films to the shorter wavelength region of the tunable laser. After plate, within the 14801510 nm rotation by 90 in the CIS range, the transmitted light was polarized by 30 dB, with the maximum value of 33 dB measured at 1500 nm. This result is in accord with a 30-dB theoretical conversion of an ideal 10- m-thick plate of LiNbO whose maximum conversion is at 1485 nm. It is also noted that when the beam spot

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size was increased to 400 m, the maximum measured conversion was reduced to 27 dB. This result presents a major improvement over the polyimide plates whose reported conversion is 20 dB [6]. Finally, the fabricated LiNbO wave plates were evaluated as an integrated part of a hybrid optical circuit. The CIS film was inserted into the slot in the middle of the optical chip. The polarization of the beam launched into silica waveguides was optimized so as to be in either fundamental TE or TM guided mode, with an extinction of better than 30 dB at 1500 nm. The TE (TM) mode emanating from the input guide was coupled into the TM (TE) mode of the output guide with the measured output light polarized at 26 dB. Similar values were obtained for all six waveguides under study and for all tested CIS films. The reduction in conversion compared to the free-space measurements is attributed to the difficulty in accurately aligning the film optic axis at 45 with respect to waveguide axes due to particularly large film dimensions ( 3 mm) relative to the slot depth ( 150 m). A more accurate precision axis alignment during the sample cutting and preparation would eliminate these shortcomings. The measured device loss of 1 dB (relative to the device loss with no film in the groove) is attributed to the reflection Fresnel losses at the two airfilm interfaces; this can be readily minimized to 0.1 dB with the use of conventional index-matching fluids. Thus, the hybrid-integrated device performed as a polarization-independent mode converter with a high conversion efficiency, a feature of paramount importance for wavelength routers and hybrid isolators. IV. CONCLUSION We have fabricated the first zeroth-order plates of LiNbO for polarization mode conversion. The plates are characterized with measured conversion ratios in excess of 30 dB and negligible material loss. We have further demonstrated a polarization-independent performance of a hybrid-optic integrated device comprised of a CIS retarder and straight single-mode silica waveguides. The measured CIS wave-plate figures of merit and the superior material properties of LiNbO make the CIS films excellent candidates for integrated polarization-insensitive devices. It is worth mentioning that CIS films as thin as 4 m have been fabricated from lower energy implants, thus making it possible to achieve zeroth-order wave retardance across the entire

visible and near infrared response (NIR) wavelength range. Finally, our ability to fabricate thin LiNbO films with aspect ratios 1000 (film width/length versus thickness) indicates that wave plates obtained by the CIS process can also be applied in bulk-optic polarization control. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank J. Fujita, M. J. Steel, and J. T. Yardley for insightful discussions, and M. Myers, PIRI Inc., Columbus, OH, for his helpful suggestions and for providing the silica waveguides. The authors would also like to thank one referee for his important comments on the ideal response of plates. REFERENCES
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