The planar light waveguide type optical amplifier fabricated by sputtering method

The planar light waveguide type optical amplifier was designed and fabricated. For the fabrication of optical amplifier, the core layer of Er-doped SiO/sub 2/ glass was deposited onto the silica cladding layer by the RF sputtering method with a deposition rate 55 /spl Aring//min. The average Er concentration of the deposited film was 0.77 wt%. Using an input signal power 20 dBm of a laser diode with 1546 nm wavelength, the gain of the optical amplifier was 5 dB with an incident pump power of 200 mW.