Photonic waveguide devices directly written into dielectric materials using femtosecond laser pulses

In this paper we will present our most recent contributions to the field of femtosecond laser direct written waveguides. In particular, at the CUDOS at Macquarie we employed novel femtosecond laser beam delivery techniques in order to fabricate low-loss photonic waveguide devices for application in technologies such as telecommunications. After trialling various passive devices including waveguides, 1-N splitters and waveguide-Bragg gratings in non-doped glasses, we transferred our technologies into Erbium/Ytterbium co-doped media resulting in active Photonic devices.