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• Touam, T
• Znaidi, L
• Vrel, D
• Ninova-Kuznetsova, I
• Brinza, O
• Fischer, A
• Boudrioua, A
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• Touam, T
• Znaidi, L
• Vrel, D
• Ninova-Kuznetsova, I
• Brinza, O
• Fischer, A
• Boudrioua, A
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• Touam, T
• Znaidi, L
• Vrel, D
• Ninova-Kuznetsova, I
• Brinza, O
• Fischer, A
• Boudrioua, A

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Coatings 2013, 3(1), 49-58; doi:10.3390/coatings3010049

Article

Low Loss Sol-Gel TiO₂ Thin Films for Waveguiding Applications

Tahar Touam ¹ , Lamia Znaidi ^2,* , Dominique Vrel ² , Iva Ninova-Kuznetsova ² , Ovidiu Brinza ² , Alexis Fischer ³  and Azzedine Boudrioua ³

¹ Laboratory of Semiconductors, University of Badji Mokhtar, BP 12, Annaba 23000, Algeria ² Laboratory of Sciences of Processes and Materials (LSPM), CNRS-UPR 3407, Paris 13 University, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 99-Jean-Baptiste Clément Avenue, Villetaneuse 93430, France ³ Lasers Physics Laboratory (LPL), CNRS-UMR 7538, Paris 13 University, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 99-Jean-Baptiste Clément Avenue, Villetaneuse 93430, France

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 21 January 2013; in revised form: 27 February 2013 / Accepted: 1 March 2013 / Published: 11 March 2013

Download PDF Full-Text [892 KB, uploaded 11 March 2013 16:48 CET]

Abstract: TiO₂ thin films were synthesized by sol-gel process: titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) was dissolved in isopropanol, and then hydrolyzed by adding a water/isopropanol mixture with a controlled hydrolysis ratio. The as prepared sol was deposited by “dip-coating” on a glass substrate with a controlled withdrawal speed. The obtained films were annealed at 350 and 500 °C (2 h). The morphological properties of the prepared films were analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The optical waveguiding properties of TiO₂ films were investigated for both annealing temperature using m-lines spectroscopy. The refractive indices and the film thickness were determined from the measured effective indices. The results show that the synthesized planar waveguides are multimodes and demonstrate low propagation losses of 0.5 and 0.8 dB/cm for annealing temperature 350 and 500 °C, respectively.

Keywords: sol-gel; TiO₂ thin films; optical properties; waveguides; propagation losses

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