Novel Glass & Fibre

Chalcogenide Thin Films by Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD)

Contact: Kevin Huang

After developing and patenting a new CVD technique, we can now routinely fabricate high quality germanium sulphide thin films and planar waveguides. Germanium sulphide can easily incorporate antimony sulphide to form stable ternary glasses within a large glass forming region. In addition, Sb-Ge-S glass has a higher refractive index and non-linearity than germanium sulphide glass. Our current research is therefore, extending our family of materials to Sb-Ge-S amorphous thin films. These materials are very useful for a number of active integrated optical circuit applications including spectral broadening and supercontinuum generation.

Silver diffused channel waveguides in GeS2 glass, fabricated by photolithography, thermal evaporation and a photo-dissolution process

This work also involves two collaborative projects; New Glass Nanowires and RAM with Dr. Charlie Tai in Taiwan and Advanced Micromachined Waveguides in Chalcogenide Glass with Bristol University.

• Waveguide Application: Continue the previous research providing chalcogenide thin film waveguides with different compositions.
• Phase-change Memory Application: Explore the phase-change memory application with the chalcogenide materials formed by the CVD technique.
• Solar Cell Application: Chalcogenide solar cell, CuInGaSe2, with the efficiency over 19%, will be investigated by the CVD technique.

This work is funded in part by EPSRC grant EP/C515668/1 Portfolio Partnership in Photonics.