Stress in copper ion-exchanged glass waveguides

This paper obtains stress profiles of copper ion-exchanged glass waveguides from the analysis of transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) modes which was measured by means of the prism-coupling technique. The reconstruction of stress profiles have been realized from an interpolation of the obtained data of effective refractive indexes. We found that the stress profiles decrease with the depth, in agreement with the behaviour of refractive index profiles. We also discuss the theory of the swelling of the glassy network, and we used an approximated model to fit our data of swelling versus diffusion time. The swelling measurements were done by means of a microinterferometrical technique.