Solgel grating waveguides for distributed Bragg reflector lasers

Solgel grating waveguides and their application to the fabrication of external-cavity distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers are demonstrated. A new composition of aluminosilicate material is developed for the fabrication of single-mode waveguides and Bragg reflectors. An average loss of $<0.2 \mathrm{dB}/\mathrm{cm}$ is measured in the single-mode waveguides at 1550 nm. The reflectors show filtering greater than 97% near 1530 nm, with a bandwidth of $\sim 0.6 \mathrm{nm}$. The Bragg reflectors are used as feedback resonators for DBR lasers. Single-mode lasing with a sidemode suppression of better than 25 dB is demonstrated.