Microstructural and optical characteristics of waveguiding piezoelectric zinc oxide films

Optical and microstructural characteristics of polycrystalline waveguiding ZnO films deposited by RF reactive sputtering has been investigated. The origin of high waveguiding mode propagation losses and spatial inhomogeneity of the sputtered films has been investigated experimentally. A technique allowing to avoid these disadvantages has been proposed. Using this technique free of mechanical stress highly oriented textured ZnO waveguiding films with optical propagation loss less than 1 dB/cm have been deposited. © COPYRIGHT SPIE.