Sol-gel is a very convenient technique for the fabrication of high quality thin glass films, optical planar waveguides and photonic bandgap structures [1-3]. Ion exchange, on the other hand, is a well established technique to fabricate high quality waveguides in glass and, in fact, optical amplifiers made by this technique are commercially available. The possible integration of the sol-gel and ion exchange techniques for the fabrication of passive and active (rare-earth doped) channel waveguides in integrated optic devices has recently gained interest.

This presentation will start with a general overview of the fabrication of passive and active films and planar waveguides by sol gel, followed by a brief description of waveguide fabrication by ion exchange (in particular sodium-silver and sodium-potassium ion exchange) and the possible integration between the two processing technologies.

In the particular case of sol-gel waveguides doped with Er³⁺ ions, the possible use of sodium-silver exchange to define channel waveguides and simultaneously enhance the Er³⁺ fluorescence emission in the presence of Ag nanoparticles will also be considered, together with the possible use of ion exchange in the pore-doping of partially densified photonic sol-gel structures with rare-earth and silver ions in solution. Some considerations will also be made concerning the use of advanced characterization techniques like ellipsometry and m-line or RBS spectroscopies in the analysis of the ion-exchange concentration profiles.

[1] R. M. Almeida, J. Non-Crystalline Solids 259 (1999) 176.

[2] Rui M. Almeida, Paulo J. Morais and Ana C. Marques, Phil. Mag. B82 (2002)

707.

[3] Rui M. Almeida, Ana C. Marques and Sabine Portal, Optical Materials 27 (2005)

1718.

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