UC Santa Cruz

Effects of thermal annealing on liquid- and solid-core antiresonant reflective optical waveguides (ARROW) are herein investigated. Transmission changes of 10 to 1000 fold increases are observed post annealing at either 300 or 700 °C. Furthermore, upon 700 °C annealing, the detectable photoluminescence of tantalum oxide cladding layers is reduced to half that of its original value. The suggestible cause for change in transmission is increased modal confinement within the ridge waveguides. Although annealing cracks form at all temperatures, their effect on transmission seems intermittent. A final culmination of the transmission changes is observed in a protein detection experiment where a 6.3 fold signal increase is observed after annealing.