Abstract
In a context where the needs for gas sensors are increasingly important, especially for environmental metrology, it is proposed in this work to achieve straight waveguides, spirals, Y-junctions, ..., elements essential for the fabrication of infrared optical micro-sensors. The realization of these elements, by stacking and etching of amorphous thin films from the Ge-Se-Te ternary system, first required the study of this system. Ge-Se-Te thin films of very different compositions were deposited by thermal co-evaporation and characterized in terms of uniformity, thermal stability, optical band gap and refractive index. The evolution of the film properties with the composition was then used to highlight a particularly attractive area of compositions in the Ge-Se-Te system: in this domain, corresponding to compositions rich in Se (more than 55 atomic %) and containing between 20 and 30 atomic % in Ge, the layers are indeed single-phase, characterized by high glass transition temperatures, high thermal stability, and a transparency window extending from 1 to about 16 microns. In this composition region, two of them were selected, Ge25Te10Se65 and Ge25Te20Se55, and used to realize different integrated optics circuits. The simplest elements, which are channel waveguides, were made by depositing successively two layers (Ge25Te10Se65 then Ge25Te20Se55) on a silicon substrate, and then by modifying the geometry of the higher refractive index top layer by ion beam etching, so as to obtain a two-dimensional confinement of light. Propagation losses of these straight waveguides were estimated at 1 dB.cm-1 at the 1.55 µm wavelength. Other more complex elements were then fabricated: S-bent waveguides for which the guiding properties were obtained whatever the curvature radius, operational spiral waveguides, Y-junctions able of a satisfactory division of the light intensity, and Mach-Zehnder interferometers at the output of which the light was successfully recombined.