Waveguide Lasers in Rare Earth Doped Planar Silica

Abstract

The aim of this project was to realise rare earth doped silica waveguide lasers. Particular attention was focused on the doping of the neodymium and erbium ions into the host glass. The host glass employed to fabricate low loss rare earth doped devices was based on the binary SiO2-P2O5 system. This was fabricated by the flame hydrolysis of SiCl4 and PCl3. This was subsequently updated for the metal halide POCl3. The deposited soot from the hydrolysis reaction was typically sintered at temperatures of 137