In this study, the technology for producing ridge waveguides with a minimal roughness of the sidewalls and material surface in a near-waveguide region was developed with the purpose of fabricating miniature photonic integrated circuits on a LiNbO₃ substrate. Plasma etching processes were used for the ridge waveguide fabrication on different material substrates. The specifications of the equipment and plasma source, method of mask fabrication and substrate material determined the process conditions for producing ridge waveguides with minimal sidewall roughness. In this work, for the ridge waveguide fabrication, the processes of reactive ion etching of LiNbO₃ with a chromium mask were carried out in a mixture of SF₆/Ar with an ICP/TCP plasma source. The process of plasma etching the LiNbO₃ with the ICP/TCP plasma source is not well studied, especially for integrated photonics purposes. As a result of our experimental work, the narrow ranges of technological parameters suitable for producing ridge waveguides on LiNbO₃ with smooth sidewalls, a slope angle of 60°–75° and a minimal quantity of observed defects in the near-waveguide region were identified. A model explaining the kinetics of the etching process of LiNbO₃ in SF₆/Ar plasma as a physical–chemical process was proposed.

Photonic integrated circuits (PIC) find applications in the fields of microwaves, telecoms and sensing. Generally, PICs are fabricated on a base of isotropic materials such as SOI, Si₃N₄, etc. However, for some applications, anisotropic substrates such as LiNbO₃ are used. A thin film of LiNbO₃ on an insulator (LNOI) is a promising material platform for complex high-speed PICs. The design and simulation of PICs on anisotropic materials should be performed using rigorous numerical methods based on Maxwell’s equations. These methods are characterized by long calculation times for one simulation iteration. Since a large number of simulation iterations are performed during the PIC design, simulation methods based on approximations should be used. The effective index method (EIM) is an approximation-based method and is widely applied for simulations of isotropic waveguides. In this study, the applicability of EIM for simulations of anisotropic waveguides is analyzed. The results obtained by EIM are compared with the calculation results of a rigorous finite-difference frequency-domain (FDFD) method for evaluation of the EIM’s applicability limits. In addition, radiation losses in waveguides with rough sidewalls are estimated using the Payne–Lacey model and EIM. The results demonstrate the applicability of EIM for the simulation of anisotropic LNOI-based waveguides with cross-section parameters specified in this paper.

Reducing the dimensions of optical gyroscopes is a crucial task and resonant fiber optic gyroscopes are promising candidates for its solution. The paper presents a prototype of a miniature resonant interferometric gyroscope of a strategic accuracy class. Due to the use of passive optical elements in this gyroscope, it has a great potential for miniaturization, alongside a low production cost and ease of implementation, since it does not require many feedback loops. The presented prototype shows results on a zero instability of 20°/h and an angle random walk of 0.16°/√h. A theoretical model explaining the nature of the multipath interference of resonant spectra and establishing the relationship between the resonator parameters and the output parameters of the presented prototype is proposed. The results predicted are in agreement with the experimental data. The prototype gyroscope demonstrates a scale factor instability and a change in the average signal level, which is due to the presence of polarization non-reciprocity, occurring due to the induced birefringence in the single-mode fiber of the contour. This problem requires further investigation to be performed.