Fabrication and characterization of chalcogenide glass photonic crystal waveguides

We report on the fabrication of chalcogenide glass (Ag-As(2)Se(3)) photonic crystal waveguides and the first detailed characterization of the linear and nonlinear optical properties. The waveguides, fabricated by e-beam lithography and ICP etching exhibit typical transmission spectra of photonic crystal waveguides, and exhibit high optical nonlinearity. Nonlinear phase shift of 1.5pi through self-phase modulation is observed at 0.78 W input peak power in a 400 microm long device. The effective nonlinear parameter gamma(eff) estimated from this result reaches 2.6 x 10(4) W(-1)m(-1). Four-wave mixing is also observed in the waveguide, while two-photon absorption at optical communication wavelengths is sufficiently small and the corresponding figure of merit is larger than 11.