This book covers new research on LiNbO3 including current studies on intrinsic and extrinsic point defects and the contribution of intrinsic defects to photoinduced charge transport. Applications of this material are also discussed.

Lithium niobate crystals have a number of unique properties. Lithium niobate is at the same time a ferroelectric, piezoelectric, pyroelectric, and has high nonlinearly optical and electro-optical coefficients and photorefractive sensitivity. These properties enable these crystals to be used widely in optical and acoustic devices, and photorefractive sensitivity, enhanced by doping with transitional metals, offers new possibilities of using lithium niobate as a recording holographic medium. These properties are determined by the crystal structure of lithium niobate sensitive to physical and chemical effects. Special attention is given in the book to physico-chemical features of technology, disruption of stoichiometry in these crystals and detection of this disruption by physical methods. At the same time, the ideas and methods proposed in the book can be used in technology of other crystals.

With the use of ferroelectric materials in memory devices and the need for high-speed integrated optics devices, interest in ferroelectric thin films continues to grow. With their remarkable properties, such as energy nonvolatility, fast switching, radiative stability and unique optoacoustic and optoelectronic properties, Lithium Niobate-Based Heterostructures: Synthesis, properties and electron phenomena discusses why lithium niobate (LiNbO3) is one of the most promising of all ferroelectric materials. Based on years of study, this book presents the systematic characterization of substructure and electronic properties of a heterosystem formed in the deposition process of lithium niobate films onto the surface of silicon wafers.

This new resource presents the concepts, technologies, and design techniques for devices based on the electro-optic effect in lithium niobate. It bridges from the theory of photonics and electro-optics, to the practice of electro-optic device design and application. There is an emphasis on practical analysis using modern modeling tools. The book explains the fundamental physics of the electro-optic effect, classes of electro-optic materials, electro-optic properties of lithium niobate, and the physics and uses of ferroelectric domain inversion. Readers are also provided with the principles of operation, performance measures, and design considerations for the most common types of electro-optic devices: beam deflectors, intensity and phase modulators, including quasi-phased matched devices.

Photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology holds great potential for breaking through the bottlenecks in current photonic and optoelectronic networks. Recently, a revolution has been witnessed in the field of lithium niobate (LN) photonics. Over the past decade, nanoscale LN waveguides with a propagation loss of ~0.01 dB and a radius of curvature on the level of ~100 μm have been demonstrated. The revolution mainly benefits from two technological advancements, the maturity of lithium-niobate-on-insulator (LNOI) technology and the innovation of nanofabrication approaches of high-quality LNOI photonic structures. Using low-loss waveguides and high-quality-factor (high-Q) microresonators produced on the LNOI platform as building blocks, various integrated photonic devices have been demonstrated with unprecedented performances. The breakthroughs have reshaped the landscape of the LN industry. This is the first monograph on LN nanophotonics enabled by the LNOI platform. It comprehensively reviews the development of fabrication technology, investigations on nonlinear optical processes, and demonstrations of electro-optical devices, as well as applications in quantum light sources, spectroscopy, sensing, and microwave-to-optical wave conversion. The book begins with an overview of the technological evolution of PICs, justifying the motivation for developing LNOI photonics. The next four chapters focus on LNOI photonics. The book concludes with a summary of the milestone achievements discussed in these chapters and provides a future perspective of this area of research.

Confinement and manipulation of photons using microcavities have triggered intense research interest in both basic and applied physics for more than a decade. Prominent examples are whispering gallery microcavities which confine photons by means of continuous total internal reflection along a curved and smooth surface. The long photon lifetime, strong field confinement, and in-plane emission characteristics make them promising candidates for enhancing light-matter interactions on a chip. In this book, we will introduce different ultra-high-Q whispering gallery microcavities, and focus on their applications in enhancing light-matter interaction, such as ultralow-threshold microlasing, highly sensitive optical biosensing, nonlinear optics, cavity quantum electrodynamics and cavity optomechanics.

The use of lithium niobate in signal filtering in TV sets and video cassette recorders is well established and it is finding increased application in optoelectronic modulation devices in DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) fibre optic systems. This fully illustrated volume brings electronic engineers, materials scientists and physicists up to date by enlisting the expertise of active researchers and presenting their considered reviews.

Recently, the rapid development of radiofrequency (RF)/microwave and photonic/optical waveguide technologies has had a significant impact on the current electronic industrial, medical and information and communication technology (ICT) fields. This book is a self-contained collection of valuable scholarly papers related to waveguide design, modeling, and applications. This book contains 20 chapters that cover three main subtopics of waveguide technologies, namely RF and microwave waveguide, photonic and optical waveguide and waveguide analytical solutions. Hence, this book is particularly useful to the academics, scientists, practicing researchers and postgraduate students whose work relates to the latest waveguide technologies.

Nonlinear Optical Crystals contains the most complete and up-to-date reference material on properties of nonlinear optical crystals including: Traditional and specific applications The mathematical formulas necessary for the calculation of the frequency conversion process A survey of 63 nonlinear optical crystals containing more than 1500 different references with full titles Recent applications of common and novel nonlinear materials, including quasi-phase matching Special consideration for periodically-poled and self-frequency-doubling materials Significant amount of crystallophysical, thermophysical, spectroscopic, electro-optic and magneto-optic information