Mitigating the bending losses of the silica-titania-based rib waveguide structure

Abstract

Optical waveguides (WGs) are widely used as interconnects in integrated optical circuits both for telecommunication and sensing applications. There are different kind of optical WG designs that offers different guiding parameters, opening a vast number of possibilities. A silica-titania (SiO2:TiO2) rib WG is discussed and examined by a numerical analysis in this article with a great emphasis on the analysis of bending losses and optimization. A modal analysis for different basic parameters of the WG is presented with a detailed wavelength-based modal analysis. Various potential fabrication methods are discussed, however, a sol-gel method and dip-coating deposition technique are proposed for the low-cost development of such WGs. Moreover, an approach towards minimizing the bending losses by adding an upper cladding layer on the rib WG is presented and described.