Silver doping of chalcogenide thin films for optical waveguide fabrication

Summary form only given. Silver doping of chalcogenide thin glass films is proposed for optical waveguide fabrication. This doping process is widely studied and used for the fabrication of diffractive optics devices. The high index increase typically achieved by silver doping of As/sub 2/S/sub 3/ chalcogenide glass (/spl Delta/n/spl ap/0.4), enables the fabrication of channel waveguides in the near infrared. Monomode waveguides requires, however, the selected doping of a very thin fraction of the films (40-50 nm for 400 nm of As/sub 2/S/sub 3/).