Erbium-doped fluoride glass waveguides

Since green laser diodes are still not commercially available, alternative technologies like frequency doubling have to be used for compact green laser sources. The goal of this work is to develop diode pumped green erbium-doped glass up-conversion waveguide lasers, instead. Planar fluoride glass waveguides are fabricated using a spin-coating technology. Until now, planar fluoride glass film waveguides with thicknesses are achieved down to 30 mum. The waveguides were doped with up to 3 mol% erbium. Scattering losses of 0.2 dB/cm at 975 nm and strong green emission at 520 - 550 nm is observed in erbium-doped waveguides 50 mum in thickness.