Abstract—An erbium-doped silica-on-silicon planar waveguide
optical amplifier is described. The active core is a topographic
guide formed from aluminophosphosilicate glass doped with
erbium and ytterbium. The buffer is formed from silica deposited
by thermal oxidation and the cladding from borophosphosilicate
glass obtained by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition.
The use of low process temperatures allows relatively heavy doping
and careful control of the core etching allows low background
insertion losses to be obtained. Spontaneous emission and gain
measurements are given and 5.4-dB fiber-device-fiber gain is
demonstrated using a 5-cm-long chip pumped using a 980-nm
laser diode at 175-mW pump power.