ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the fundamental fabrication steps for making passive planar waveguides and discusses some issues and challenges. lt discusses the three main materials: III–V semiconductors, silica, and silicon-on-insulators. It covers the basic fabrication steps: growth, deposition, lithography, etching, and finally, dicing and cleaving. The chapter also covers the process of etching which is the selective removal of material subsequent to its patterning by a lithographic process. The lithographic techniques discussed in the chapter uses polymers to be patterned and then used as masks for pattern transfers into substrates. Several promising approaches have been investigated to reduce the levels of global warming potential (GWP) emissions: more efficient processing by increasing the amount of reacted-dissociated etchant gases, introducing additive gases like N2 or NO to C4F8 plasma, substituting etchant gases with less GWP or more efficient gases, and implementing an efficient gas abatement system.
