Abstract

Glass waveguides have attracted a lot of interest in integrated optics because of their low loss and low cost. Ion exchange has been the most popular technique tor fabrication of waveguides in glass substrates.¹ Among the ions used to achieve guidance in glass,² K⁺ is more suitable for singlemode waveguide fabrication.³ We recently carried out the diffusion and modal characterization of K⁺-Na⁺ exchanged waveguides and have demonstrated that low-loss single-mode waveguides (propagation loss of ~0.1 dB/ cm) can be manufactured in a flame polished substrate (Corning 0211).³ In the present work, we have investigated experimentally the effect of external factors (e.g. strain, temperature, humidity) on optical behavior of K⁺-Na⁺ exchanged waveguides. We have also examined theoretically the performance of glass waveguide tapered couplers and directional coupler wavelength filters.

© 1988 Optical Society of America