Development of fabrication process of Planar Light-wave Circuit (PLC) : Optimization of the fabrication process of planar light-wave circuit by Hybrid Sol-Gel methods

We report on the optimization of the fabrication process of hybrid sol-gel thin film deposition to produce low cost $1 {\times} 16$ splitters for optical communications. We learn that sol-gel film thickness is dependent upon the spinning speeds and viscosity of the sol-gel solutions and refractive index upon the dopant concentrations of Al and Zr in the sol solutions. We could find the optimized physical conditions to achieve the desired thickness of core and cladding layers. We will further carry out the fabrication and measurements of insertion loss, polarization dependent loss (PDL), etc. for the performance of fabricated splitter devices.