Refractive index depth profile in PMMA due to proton irradiation

Proton Beam Writing has been successfully used to create buried channel waveguides in PMMA, which suggested that proton irradiation increases the refractive index. To investigate this effect, PMMA samples were irradiated by 1.7–2.1 MeV proton beam. Spectroscopic ellipsometry has been used to investigate the depth profile of the refractive index. An increase of the refractive index was observed in the order of 0.01, which is approximately one order of magnitude higher than the detection limit. The highest increase of the refractive index occurs at the end of range, i.e. we found a good correlation with the Bragg curve of the energy loss.