| Erbium doped waveguide amplifiers (EDWAs) have attracted much attention inrecent years, due to its potential application for the development of opticalcommunication technology in the low loss telecommunication windows at1535nmwavelength. In comparison with the erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), EDWAscould afford high gain in a much smaller device size and be integrated with photonicdevices based on silicon substrates, such as switches, couplers and splitters. Incontrast to inorganic hosts, polymeric materials have excellent properties, such assimple processing, high bandwidth and potentially low cost. Especially, Er3+dopedinorganic nanoparticles (NPs) can be dispersed into polymer matrices and used toconstruct polymer-based EDWAs.In this thesis, sub-15nm NaLuF4:Er3+,Yb3+nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesizedby using high temperature thermal decomposition approach. Under excitation at980nm, the near infrared emission characteristic of the nanocrystals were tesing. Thesynthesized NaLuF4:Er3+,Yb3+NPs were dispersed into the SU-8polymer as the corematerial of the optical waveguide amplifiers. The polymer optical waveguideamplifiers were designed and fabricated. When the input signal power of0.1mW andthe pump power of220mW, a relative optical gain of2.1dB was obtained at1535nm in an18mm-long waveguide.In this thesis, a new NaYF4:Er3+, Yb3+NPs-PMMA covalent-linkingnanocomposite was prepared by copolymerization of the oleic acid-modifiedNaYF4:Er3+, Yb3+with methyl methacrylate (MMA). Using the NPs-PMMAcovalent-linking nanocomposite as the core material, the optical waveguide amplifierswith a structure of embedded waveguide were fabricated. For an input signal power of0.14mW and a pump power of400mW, a relative optical gain of7.6dB wasobtained at1540nm in a15mm-long waveguide. This strategy not only increases theinorganic NPs doping concentration in polymer matric, but also avoids theaggregation of the NPs, and consequently improves the properties of the EDWAs. |
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