Bell Telephone Laboratories

Susan P Lyman

Rodney C Alferness

Janet L Jackel

Lawrence L Buhl

Vellayan Ramaswamy

A simple, inexpensive, and reliable technique for substantially preventing the unwanted formation of a surface guiding layer during manufacture of light-guiding structures in LiNbO.sub.3 and LiTaO.sub.3 substrates is disclosed. The technique involves addition of an effective amount of a gaseous hydrogen donor to the processing atmosphere during high-temperature processing. A particularly convenient hydrogen donor is water vapor, which can be added to the atmosphere by, for instance, bubbling of the feed gas through a water column. A partial pressure of more than about 9 Torr of H.sub.2 O has been found effective in the practice of the technique.

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Matawan, NJ, United States of America

Susan P Lyman