Investigation of material and optical properties of erbium-doped sputtered glass films

In this thesis, material and optical properties of sputtered erbium-doped glass films were investigated through experimentation and simulation. Erbium-doped glass is of interest for integrated optics applications because it exhibits a luminescent electronic transition near 1540 nm when excited by a 980 nm laser source. This can be utilized in all-optical waveguide amplifiers operating in the 1550 nm telecommunications window. The film properties studied include spontaneous emission as well as film adhesion, glass microstructure, and spatial uniformity of film thickness and refractive index. It was found that some of the films exhibited spontaneous emission and that this was often improved if the substrates were either heated during deposition or annealed after. It was also found that the refractive indices of some of the films sputtered from bulk glass targets increased from the centre of the wafer out to the radial edge. A wavelength dispersive microprobe was used to show that the concentration of heavy elements correspondingly increased outward toward the edge of the film.