Laser-assisted microstructuring for Ti : sapphire channel-waveguide fabrication

We report on the fabrication of Ti:sapphire channel waveguides. Such channel waveguides are of interest, e.g., as low-threshold tunable lasers. We investigated several structuring methods including ion beam implantation followed by wet chemical etching strip loading by polyimide spin coating and subsequent laser micro-machining, direct laser ablation or reactive ion etching through laser-structured polyimide contact masks. The later two methods result in ribs having different widths and heights up to similar to5 mum. By reactive ion etching we have obtained channel waveguides with strong confinement of the Ti:sapphire fluorescence emission.