OPTICAL WAVEGUIDE AND METHOD FOR FABRICATING THE SAME

摘要

An optical waveguide comprising cladding 1 and core segment 20 buried in cladding 1 and serving as a waveguide, wherein a combination of glass material constituting the core segment 20 and another glass material constituting the cladding 1 is so selected that an absolute value of difference in coefficient of thermal expansion between these materials ( alpha 1 - alpha 2) is within a range of 0 and 9x10<-7> / DEG C, where alpha 1 denotes a coefficient of thermal expansion of the former material and alpha 2 denotes that of the latter material. Since this makes possible to bond directly the glass materials having different refraction factors and different coefficients of thermal expansion, and to produce the optical waveguide at even a lower temperature as compared to the prior art method as an upper cladding layer is formed with the sputtering method, it realizes reduction in number of processes and time of manufacture, thereby providing the optical waveguide of low transmission loss at low cost, as well as a method of manufacturing the same. <IMAGE>