Integrated Photonics on Glass: A Review of the Ion-Exchange Technology Achievements

Ion-exchange on glass is one of the major technological platforms that are available to manufacture low-cost, high performance Planar Lightwave Circuits (PLC). In this paper, the principle of ion-exchanged waveguide realization is presented. Then a review of the main achievements observed over the last 30 years will be given. The focus is first made on devices for telecommunications (passive and active ones) before the application of ion-exchanged waveguides to sensors is addressed.

High-Q-Factor Silica-Based Racetrack Microring Resonators

In this paper, ultrahigh-Q factor racetrack microring resonators (MRRs) are demonstrated based on silica planar lightwave circuits (PLCs) platform. A loaded ultrahigh-Q factor Qload of 1.83 × 106 is obtained. The MRRs are packaged with fiber-to-fiber loss of ~5 dB. A notch depth of 3 dB and ~137 pm FSR are observed. These MRRs show great potential in optical communications as filters. Moreover, the devices are suitable used in monolithic integration and hybrid integration with other devices, especially in external cavity lasers (ECLs) to realize ultranarrow linewidths.