Photochemical self-developing of doped sol-gel hybrid glass waveguides

Sol-gel hybrid glass (SGHG) films doped with various photoinitiators; were prepared. Volatile photoinitiators are photolocked in SGHG matrix by photochemical reaction upon UV exposure. Refractive index and film thickness increases by UV exposure due to photoinduced polymerization and photolocking of high refractive index species. Using the photolocking of photoinitiators, channel waveguide was fabricated without using developing process step, which will be called photochemical self-developing.