Ion-exchange technology on glass has been successfully used for more than twenty years to realize dependable and low cost integrated optics devices on silicate or phosphate glasses for the realization of passive and active devices in the telecommunication wavelengths operations range (from λ = 0.8 to 1.7 µm). However, the recent developments of integrated optics instruments for astronomical interferometers or biological sensors has lead to an increase of the devices operation range towards the mid-infrared. For these reasons, we present in this paper the development and the realization of single-mode waveguides by means of a binary ion-exchange on glass operating between λ = 2 and 4 µm. In this study, the choice of germanate glass BGA-G115 from Kigre Inc. has been made because of both its similarity with silicate glass, its content of Na+ ions and its excellent transparency until λ = 5 µm. A complete study of the silver ion diffusion on this new glass matrix has been performed allowing the determination of silver and sodium ion-diffusion coefficients, which have been extracted by realizing slab waveguides with different ion-exchange times, temperatures or silver concentrations. Using theses datas, simulations have shown that an ion-exchange of 90 min in a 0.03AgNO3-0.97NaNO3 molten salt at a temperature of 330°C can lead to the realization of single mode channel waveguides at either λ = 1.55 µm or λ = 3.39 µm depending on the diffusion window width. To demonstrate channel waveguides on BGA-G115, a specific technological process based on the deposition of a polysilicon masking layer has been implemented. Single-mode channel waveguides, with a 2.5 µm diffusion window width, have thus been realized and characterized at the wavelength of 1.55 µm. Modal size has been measured to be 10 µm ± 1 µm x 7 µm ± 1 µm for propagation losses of 1.2 dB/cm ± 0.5 dB/cm for a 2 cm ± 0.1 cm long device.

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