Résumé
The interest of the chalcogenide planar waveguides for infrared applications like environmental metrology, optical amplification or spatial interferometry is shown. The realisation of such waveguides by stacking and etching un-doped or doped films is than described, stage by stage. The first one consisted in acquiring the control of the radio-frequency chalcogenide thin film sputtering. Good quality and reproducible thin films were obtained. The relation between the optical properties and the films thickness was shown. The second stage was the erbium-doped chalcogenide thin film deposition. The presence of Er(3+) ions was higlighted by the photoluminescence measurements. Photoluminescence lifetime values are encouraging. The third stage of the planar waveguide realisation was the thin film etching : three different etching ways (chemical, plasma and reactive plasma etchings) were tested and compared. Good quality ribs were obtained whatever the method employed. The last stage described in this manuscript is the realisation and characterisation of the waveguides : two types of waveguide (TIR and ARROW) were realised and tested successfully.