Low-loss near-infrared passive optical waveguide components formed by electron beam irradiation of silica-on-silicon

Results are presented for a range of near infrared single-mode passive channel waveguide optical components fabricated in PECVD silica-on-silicon by electron beam irradiation. The devices include S-bends, Mach-Zehnder interferometers, Y-junction tree-structured splitters, and directional couplers. It is shown that low loss may be obtained through appropriate choice of waveguide bend radius and fabrication parameters; fiber-device insertion losses of /spl ap/2 dB and /spl ap/1 dB are achieved for 1/spl times/8 splitters and 3-dB directional couplers, respectively, at /spl lambda/=1.525 /spl mu/m.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>