Subwavelength Grating Waveguide Structures Proposed on the Low-Cost Silica–Titania Platform for Optical Filtering and Refractive Index Sensing Applications

Abstract

The sol–gel dip-coating method is a cost-efficient way for the realization of thin films on a planar substrate. In this work, high-quality, low-loss, and low-surface roughness silica–titania thin films are deposited on a glass substrate with the sol–gel dip-coating method. This platform works in the visible to near-IR wavelength ranges and can be useful for several eye-catching photonic components. The paper is comprised of two parts: the first part deals with the development of a low-cost silica–titania waveguide system, whereas the second part provides detail on the numerical modeling of the SWG waveguide filter and SWG waveguide FP-sensor design. The SWG waveguide NIR-stopband filter can achieve an ER of >40 dB and 3-dB bandwidth of 110 nm designed at optimized parameters. The SWG waveguide-FP structure proposed in this work act as a refractive index sensor where the sensitivity is ~120 nm/RIU by reducing the width of the waveguide. This sensitivity can be further enhanced by reducing the waveguide height. We believe that this work is quite important for the realization of low-cost integrated photonic devices based on the silica–titania platform developed via the sol–gel dip-coating method.