%0 Journal Article
%T Low Loss Sol-Gel TiO2 Thin Films for Waveguiding Applications
%A Tahar Touam
%A Lamia Znaidi
%A Dominique Vrel
%A Iva Ninova-Kuznetsova
%A Ovidiu Brinza
%A Alexis Fischer
%A Azzedine Boudrioua
%J Coatings
%D 2013
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/coatings3010049
%X TiO 2 thin films were synthesized by sol-gel process: titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) was dissolved in isopropanol, and then hydrolyzed by adding a water/isopropanol mixture with a controlled hydrolysis ratio. The as prepared sol was deposited by ˇ°dip-coatingˇ± on a glass substrate with a controlled withdrawal speed. The obtained films were annealed at 350 and 500 ˇăC (2 h). The morphological properties of the prepared films were analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The optical waveguiding properties of TiO 2 films were investigated for both annealing temperature using m-lines spectroscopy. The refractive indices and the film thickness were determined from the measured effective indices. The results show that the synthesized planar waveguides are multimodes and demonstrate low propagation losses of 0.5 and 0.8 dB/cm for annealing temperature 350 and 500 ˇăC, respectively.
%K sol-gel
%K TiO2 thin films
%K optical properties
%K waveguides
%K propagation losses
%U http://www.mdpi.com/2079-6412/3/1/49