Optical Waveguide of Lithium Niobate Nanophotonics

Abstract

Lithium niobate (LiNbO3) is single crystal and important material for optical waveguides, mobile phones, piezoelectric sensors, optical modulators, and various other linear and nonlinear optical applications. Nanophotonics is the study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale, and the interaction of nanometer‐scale objects with light. It is widely used for photonic applications. Therefore, it is a very promising material to fabricate integrated optical devices due to its superior optical properties are suitable for various optical applications, and it is known as a ferroelectric material used to form waveguides. It has some specific advantages as possibility of producing step index, selective incorporation of dopants, the fabrication of multilayer structures, and the miniaturization and integration of these devices. The planar optical waveguides elucidate the fabrication and integration of several optical components on the same planar substrate, such as interleave filters, beam splitters, variable attenuators, wavelength multiplexers, and optical switchers. The fundamental property of waveguide structures is the relation between the number of the waveguide modes in the function of the layer thickness propagating in the structure and its refractive index because the propagation of light along a waveguide is one of the fundamental and important questions of wave optics. These advantages of planar optical waveguides can be explained as a low connection loss to optical fibers, low transmission loss, high reliability, compact size, and high reproducibility. It is focused on the design and analysis of photonic LiNbO3 using sol–gel method.