Sol-gel thin films for photonic application

For the fabrication of photonic devices the sol-gel technique is a potentially lucrative alternative to methods such as physical vapor or chemical vapor deposition because of its solution-processability, low cost and relative ease of production. In this work we harness this potential by developing based photonic devices which incorporate highly luminescent CdSe@ZnS core-shell semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) doped within inorganic (TiO2, ZrO2) or hybrid organic-inorganic sol-gel films. As a pre-requisite to the formation of such devices, luminescent waveguides emitting between green and red have been obtained and their optical properties have been characterized. The photochemical stability of these waveguides was found to highly dependent on the exact sol-gel material used. QDs:Titania based composites were found to be inherently photo-unstable due to photoelectron injection into the bulk matrix and subsequent nanocrystal oxidation. In comparison, zirconia composites were significantly more robust with high photoluminescence retained up to annealing temperatures of 300 °C. Despite this difference in photo-chemical stability, both titania and zirconia composite waveguides exhibited amplified stimulated emission (ASE) with one-photon and two-photon optical pumping, however only zirconia based waveguides exhibited long term photostability. This Zirconia based films have been used for the realization of distributed feedback lasers and Bragg micro-cavities.