Control of lateral domain spreading in congruent lithium niobate by selective proton exchange

Proton exchange was observed to increase the poling voltage for congruent lithium niobate. Patterned proton exchange was then used to control domain nucleation and inhibit broadening of reversed domains. Periodically proton exchanged samples were used to form domain gratings by electric field poling just using planar electrodes and without need for poling current control. The reversed domain gratings had a duty cycle faithfully reproducing that of the proton exchanged pattern with straight domain walls parallel to the x face, thus demonstrating that high-fidelity reversed domain patterning is possible to obtain by a relatively simple process.