Influence of temperature and environment humidity on the transmission spectrum of sol–gel hybrid channel waveguides

Hybrid materials produced by the hydrolytic sol–gel process reveal strong absorption in the spectral region of 1550 nm, mainly due to the high concentration of OH groups. This characteristic constitutes an obstacle to the application of these materials, in particular to telecom integrated optical devices. A simple thermal treatment applied to the device does not contribute to increase the transparency. The real-time influence of temperature and environment humidity on the optical transmission properties of sol–gel organic–inorganic raised channel waveguides is analyzed in order to achieve an understanding of the OH group’s behaviour in the materials. We demonstrate that the level of the optical losses at 1550 nm can significantly be decreased at high temperature. Cooling the sample in dry atmosphere makes it possible to reach a better transparency, which can be useful to improve the performance of hybrid sol–gel optical devices.