UV-NIR femtosecond laser hybrid lithography for efficient printing of complex on-chip waveguides

We propose UV-IR femtosecond laser hybrid lithography for the efficient printing of complex on-chip waveguides, which offers good performance in terms of processing efficiency and accuracy. With this three-dimensional printing technology, waveguides with complex cross-section shapes, such as owls and kittens, can be easily fabricated with an efficiency increased by 1500% (for 6 mu m x 6 mu m). In addition, a circular cross-section waveguide with an extremely low birefringence and complex 8 x 8 random walk networks were quickly customized, which implies that in the design and preparation of the large-scale optical chips, the proposed maskless method allows for the preparation of highly customized devices. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America