https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202430906018
Rapid thermal annealing of chalcogenide thin films for mid-infrared sensing and nonlinear photonics
1 Department of Graphic Arts and Photophysics, Faculty of Chemical Technology, University of Pardubice, Pardubice, Czechia
2 Center of Materials and Nanotechnologies, Faculty of Chemical Technology, University of Pardubice, Pardubice, Czechia
3 Univ Rennes, CNRS, ISCR (Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes)–UMR 6226, F-35000 Rennes, France
4 Univ Rennes, CNRS, Institut Foton - UMR 6082, F-22305 Lannion, France
* Corresponding author: tomas.halenkovic@upce.cz
Published online: 31 October 2024
The influence of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) onto chalcogenide Ge-Sb-Se thin films is reported, focusing on changes in optical properties. These materials possess broad mid-infrared transparency covering the most critical absorption bands for (bio)chemical sensing and high third-order optical nonlinearities for potential applications in nonlinear photonics. The parameters of the RTA process within this study include the annealing temperature, heating rate, and the two sample processing methods – one by placing the sample inside the graphite susceptor and the other by simply laying the sample onto the silicon wafer. Selenide thin films were found to undergo a shift of the absorption edge upon the RTA, resulting in an optical bandgap energy increase (bleaching effect) and a notable refractive index decrease. As a result of structural relaxation, such changes show a great potential of RTA in fine-tuning of optical performance of chalcogenide thin films and planar chalcogenide waveguides. The authors acknowledge the IBAIA (101092723) Horizon Europe project, the ANR AQUAE (ANR-21-CE04-0011-04) project of the French National Research Agency (ANR), and project No. 22-05179S of the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) for financial support.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2024
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
