Laser-induced-forward-transfer: A rapid prototyping tool for fabrication of photonic devices

Abstract

We propose a rapid prototyping method for the fabrication of optical waveguides based on the direct laser-printing method of ultrafast Laser-Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) followed by further processing. The method was implemented for the fabrication of titanium in-diffused lithium niobate channel waveguides and X-couplers by LIFT-depositing titanium metal followed by diffusion. Propagation loss as low as 0.8 dB/cm was measured in preliminary experiments. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.