Subwavelength-diameter silica wires for microscale optical components

Abstract:

Subwavelength-diameter silica wires fabricated using a taper-drawing approach exhibit excellent diameter uniformity and atomic-level smoothness, making them suitable for low-loss optical wave guiding from the UV to the near-infrared. Such air-clad silica wires can be used as single-mode waveguides; depending on wavelength and wire diameter, they either tightly confine the optical fields or leave a certain amount of guided energy outside the wire in the form of evanescent waves. Using these wire waveguides as building blocks we assembled microscale optical components such as linear waveguides, waveguide bends and branch couplers on a low-index, non- dissipative silica aerogel substrate. These components are much smaller than comparable existing devices and have low optical loss, indicating that the wire-assembly technique presented here has great potential for developing microphotonics devices for future applications in a variety of fields such as optical communication, optical sensing and high-density optical integration. Keywords: Subwavelength, silica, nanowire, microphotonics, nanophotonics, optical components