Sol-Gel Room

Sol-Gel

The sol-gel room is an area dedicated to the fabrication of confined photonic structures such as planar waveguides and 3D photonic crystals, obtained by chemical route.

The sol-gel room is a home made clean room (1000 class), equipped with a controlled dip-coater working in the range from 30mm/min to 60mm/min.

A complementary deposition apparatus is a Laurell spin-coater (WS400B-6NPP) with a maximum speed of 10.000 RPM and the possibility to mount wafers with max diameter of 150mm.

The treatment necessary for the densification of the dielectric waveguides is performed using a tubular oven that present a uniform area of 12cm with a precision of ±2.5°C and a maximum temperature of 1200°C.

A home made PID controlled oven is also present for the growth of 3D colloidal crystals.