The Research Of Glass-based Ion-exchange2×N Optical Power Splitter

Ion-exchange is a traditional effective method for manufacturing glass-based planar lightwave circuit (PLC). Ion-exchange waveguide on glass gets hot for its numerous benefits, such as low cost, low propagation loss, easily doping high concentrations of rare-earth ion, good matching with single-mode fiber, low internal stress, good environmental stability and capable of integrating many components on the same substrate, especially suitable for the fabrication of the large volumes and low cost integrated optical devices. Traditional Ag+/Na+ion exchange technology has received widespread research, and lots of low cost passive and active components have been realized by this technology, such as wavelength multiplexers, optical splitter, optical amplifiers, lasers and sensors, and widely used in optical communication and sensing systems to transmit and route optical signals over distance. Among them,1×N optical power splitter, as the representative of the passive integrated optical devices, is relatively mature application of ion exchange technology.In order to meet the demand of fabrication and application of2×N optical power splitter, the theoretical and experimental researches were made in broadband integrated2×23dB coupler. The traditional asymmetric X-junction was improved by using three-dimensional beam propagation method (3D-BPM), through simulation and design,2×23dB coupler with low loss and wide operating bandwidth was obtained. Considering characteristics of asymmetric X-junction, the broadband2×23dB coupler was successfully made by using Ag+/Na+ion-exchange technique in glass. The measurement of light spectrum, using two broadband light source with operating wavelength respectively in1260～1360nm and1460～1600nm, showed that the insertion loss was less than4.0dB in the broadband range, wavelength response was relatively flat and wavelength insensitive, uniformity was less than0.5dB. Based on this, a preliminary design of2×N optical power splitter, the results of simulation is good, which lays a solid foundation for the process of production of the future. The results prove that, using the improved asymmetric X-junction combined with ion-exchange technique, can fabricate and obtain the broadband2×23dB coupler with good performance in glass, which lays good foundation for further optimization of the device performance and successful development of its valuable application, such as2XN optical power splitter.