• Gopalan, V.
• Valdivia, C. E.
• Scott, J. G.
• Scrymgeour, D. A.
• Eason, Robert W.
• Sones, Collin
• Clarke, I. P.
• Mailis, S.
• Jungk, T.
• Soergel, E.

Abstract

Fabrication of periodically inverted domain patterns in ferroelectric materials such as lithium niobate has been widely researched for the realisation of applications as diverse as quasi-phase-matched (QPM) non-linear devices, electro-optic Bragg deflectors, photonic band-gap structures, and piezoelectric devices such as micro-resonators, atom traps and micro-cavities. In order to overcome the limitations associated with E-field poling, we have been investigating the feasibility of a relatively simple single-step technique, which exploits the interaction of intense laser light with ferroelectric lithium niobate to engineer domains at micron and sub-micron scale-lengths. Some light-assisted poling experiments which take advantage of the ultraviolet light-induced transient change in the coercive field of the illuminated ferroelectric material to transfer a patterned light distribution into an equivalent domain structure in bulk crystals have already been reported for lithium tantalate and lithium niobate crystals. In this letter we report a direct optical poling technique that employs pulsed ultraviolet laser light to induce surface domain inversion in undoped lithium niobate in a single step. We further characterize the laser modified domain manipulated crystals using differential chemical etching and scanning force microscopy (SFM).

Topics

• surface
• phase
• experiment
• etching
• Lithium
• microscopy