MEMS-Based waveguide SiO2 fabricated by RIE process for optical sensing

Abstract

Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) is a dry etching technique and uses chemically reactive plasma to remove material deposited on wafers such as silicon dioxide (SiO2) or silicon nitride (SiN). The proposed planar waveguide design (Fig. 1) is composed of a SiO2 layer (high-refractive index) deposited on a borosilicate glass substrate (BR33) with approximately 80% of SiO2 in its chemical composition (low-refractive index). Typically, the main materials for waveguides are SiO2 and SiN and the RIE masking layer is aluminum-based (Al). An high refractive index of the SiO2 layer can be tuned by controlling the deposition process parameters.