Understanding aging in chalcogenide glass thin films using precision resonant cavity refractometry

Chalcogenide glass (ChG) thin films have a wide range of applications in planar photonics that rely on the stability of their optical properties. However, most methods do not provide quantitative optical property data at sufficiently high resolution. We have employed a resonant cavity refractometry...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOptical materials express Vol. 9; no. 5; p. 2252
Main Authors Geiger, Sarah, Du, Qingyang, Huang, Bin, Shalaginov, Mikhail Y., Michon, Jérôme, Lin, Hongtao, Gu, Tian, Yadav, Anupama, Richardson, Kathleen A., Jia, Xinqiao, Hu, Juejun
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington Optical Society of America 01.05.2019
Subjects
Aging
Annealing
Chalcogenides
Change detection
Glass
Optical properties
Photonics
Refractivity
Stability
Thin films
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Summary:Chalcogenide glass (ChG) thin films have a wide range of applications in planar photonics that rely on the stability of their optical properties. However, most methods do not provide quantitative optical property data at sufficiently high resolution. We have employed a resonant cavity refractometry technique capable of detecting refractive index changes down to 10−6 refractive index unit (RIU) to study the aging, or sub-Tg structural relaxation kinetics, of Ge23Sb7S70 ChG. Our study reveals that the refractive index (RI) change due to aging tends to follow stretched exponential behavior, with stretch exponents and rate of index change dependent on initial glass treatment. Thermally annealed devices show the best stability, suggesting that thermal annealing is the appropriate post-deposition treatment method for obtaining stable ChG films.
ISSN:2159-3930
2159-3930
DOI:10.1364/OME.9.002252