Structuring and Uniformity Improvement of Thin Film Waveguide Materials

Presented by Matthias Nestler, Product Development Director at scia Systems

Thin-film waveguides, widely acclaimed for their electro-optic and piezoelectric properties, demand precise fabrication techniques to ensure consistent device performance. Integrating new materials, e.g. Lithium Niobate and Silicon Nitride, material stacks, and designs is essential in advancing photonics and optoelectronics, but it also requires new etching solutions. Ion beam technologies are versatile tools that meet the challenges of waveguide processing.

In his presentation, Matthias Nestler covers specific applications in nanodevice and thin-film manufacturing:

• High-precision ion beam patterning
  Due to its high kinetic energy, ion beam milling can structure all materials without requiring a specific process chemistry. By adding reactive gases, reactive ion beam etching can offer additional advantages, improving, for example, etching accuracy and surface quality.
   
• Ion beam trimming for film thickness correction
  By combining a focused broad ion beam with controlled axis-stage movement, ion beam trimming enables dimensional corrections down to the sub-nanometer range, thereby improving device uniformity and optimizing electro-optic and piezoelectric thin films.
   
• Generation of 3D nanostructures
  Due to the directional anisotropic removal effect at simultaneously low divergence, ion beam technologies can be applied to generate 3-dimensional nanostructures.