Tin-Diffused Glass Slab Waveguides Locally Covered with Tapered Thin TiO2 Films for Application as a Polarimetric Interference Sensor with an Improved Performance

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Abstract
Common soda lime slide glass substrates made by floating molten glass on the surface of molten tin contain a tin-diffused layer that is demonstrated to be a low-loss polarization-insensitive slab optical waveguide. In this study, such a tin-diffused waveguide was locally covered with a tapered thin TiO2 film to form a composite structure in which the zeroth-order transverse electric (TE0) and magnetic (TM0) modes are spatially separated from each other. This feature enables the composite structure to serve as a highly sensitive polarimetric interferometer. Moreover, a negligible modal birefringence of tin-diffused waveguides offers the polarimetric interferometer an improved performance relative to those fabricated earlier using single-mode potassium ion-exchanged glass waveguides. In situ detection of both the protein adsorption and a small change in refractive index of liquid was accomplished using the tin-diffused waveguide-based polarimetric interferometer. With horse heart myoglobin, adsorption from aqueous solution less than 0.125 monolayer coverage can cause the interferometer to yield a phase-difference change of Δφ = 2π.