METALLIZATION STRESS IN WEAKLY GUIDING INP INGAASP WAVE-GUIDES/

Although contact metallization causes stress in the underlying materia l, the magnitude of the resulting change in refractive index is often not appreciated. We investigate here the distribution of the change in refractive index due to stress caused by Ti/Pt/Au contact layers in w eakly guiding InGaAsP waveguides operating near 1.3 mum. Polarization- resolved photoluminescence and beam propagation calculations, combined with a simple stress model, are applicable to general processing-indu ced stress in InP-based waveguides and to waveguide design.