Sol-gel waveguide thin film of YBO3:: preparation and characterization

Pure and Eu3+ ions doped YBO3 waveguide thin films were dip-coated for the first time through sol-gel route. The quality of the film depends significantly on the dip-coating conditions, especially on environment humidity. We succeeded to prepare crack free thick films with 16 layers and thickness of about 850 nm. Tt is found that the coating process obeys a two-step kinetics. The films were characterized by different methods, such as m-line spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy and waveguide fluorescence spectroscopy (WFS). When the annealing temperature is lower than 600 degrees C the film is amorphous and has good waveguide performance. The attenuation of the propagation we have reached is about 0.5 dB/cm. The film starts to crystallize at 700 degrees C. The waveguide performance of the him decreases dramatically with the annealing temperature above 700 degrees C, The result of WFS also indicates that this new kind of thin film is a good host material for active dopants. Our preliminary results show that the new thin film is of great potential for future application in optoelectronics. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.