Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
We present secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) study results on interfaces of LiNbO3 based optoelectronic devices, which have been performed in order to examine the cause of device failures. The devices are widely used in current high-speed optical fiber communication systems, and such investigation from a materials-viewpoint is important to improve the device quality. Especially, the device long-term stability is strongly affected by alkali-contaminants diffused into the SiO2 buffer layer of device, and here we confirmed that an adoption of common Si3N4 passivation is effective in preventing the process-induced contamination without any influence to device performance.