Beam steering devices without moving parts are highly desirable for their potential application in emerging optical technologies such as holographic optical storage systems, all optical networks, and optical switches. We demonstrate a thin-film waveguide beam deflector device that consists of an electro-optic prism array within a polymer waveguide. An electrode structure defines the prism array within the planar waveguide. The deflection efficiency of 28 mrad/kV and the maximum deflection angle of Ϯ8.4 mrad at Ϯ300 V are obtained for this demonstration device. Further optimization of electrode-field poling and processing is likely to improve these results by at least an order of magnitude. © 2001 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

Optical amplification and first-order electro-optic effect have been observed simultaneously in one polymeric material photolime gel which has been used widely as a volume holographic material to produce dichromated gelatin films. In this letter, the dual functions were achieved by doping neodymium chloride hexahydrate and chlorophenol red. The optimized doping concentration of Nd ϩ3 is 6.7ϫ10 19 cm Ϫ3. The weight percentage of chlorophenol red is 23%. We observed a 3.8 dB of optical gain at 1.06 m and an electro-optic coefficient of 22 pm/V at 633 nm. © 1998 American Institute of Physics. ͓S0003-6951͑98͒03622-5͔ Dichromated gelatin ͑DCG͒ has been used widely as a volume hologram emulsion for many years. 1 A myriad of optical elements, such as wavelength division multiplexers, waveguide amplifiers, laser filters, cavity mirrors for electrooptic modulation, and display holograms, has been demonstrated using this polymeric material. 2-13 In order to realize a monolithically-integrated polymer-based optical circuit, active devices such as waveguide modulators, switches, amplifiers, and lasers are needed. In this letter we report a dualfunctional polymeric waveguide using the same host polymeric material for dichromated gelatin, aimed at providing not only holographic optical elements but also amplification and electro-optic ͑EO͒ switching. The host material photolime gelatin is codoped with neodymium chloride hexahydrate (NdCl 3 •6H 2 O) and chlorophenol red (C 19 H 12 Cl 2 O 5 S). Neodymium chloride hexahydrate is doped to provide Nd ϩ3 ions for optical amplification, and chlorophenol red to provide electro-optic modulation. Low-loss waveguides were obtained through a novel method dissolving all active dopants completely in mixed solvents. 14 No aggregation was observed in the waveguide even when the concentrations of NdCl 3 and chlorophenol red reached as high as 10% and 35% by weight, respectively. The absorption spectra of three samples, a photolime gel ͑Gel͒ film, a chlorophenol red doped gel ͑CR/Gel͒ film, and an Nd ϩ3 and chlorophenol red codoped gel (Nd ϩ3 /CR/Gel) film, are shown in Fig. 1. Within the range of 400-1200 nm, four main absorption bands were observed, centered at 433, 578, 745, and 796 nm. The first strong absorption band is due to chlorophenol red. The other three smaller bands of absorption correspond to the transitions of Nd ϩ3 from ground state (4 I 9/2) to excited states of (2 G 7/2), (4 F 7/2), and (4 F 5/2), respectively. Figure 2 shows the setup for amplification measurement. The waveguide under test was mounted on a prism coupling stage. The pumping beam, from a tunable Ti:Sapphire laser, was coupled into the waveguide using the prism P 1. The 1.06 m signal beam was provided by an Nd:YAG laser, and coupled into the waveguide from the opposite direction using the prism P 2. Note that P 1 also functioned as the output prism for the 1.06 m signal beam. The pumping beam and the signal beam were carefully aligned to ensure the overlap

We have demonstrated a polymeric electro-optic modulator based on a 1ϫ2 Y-fed directional waveguide coupler. The symmetric geometry of the 1ϫ2 Y-fed directional coupler provided the modulator unique characteristics of intrinsic 3 dB operating point and two complementary output ends. A low switching voltage of 3.6 V and a high extinction ratio of 26 dB were obtained with the modulator operating at a wavelength of 1.34 m. The modulator was fabricated with a novel electro-optic polymer that was synthesized from polyurethane cross-linking with a chromophore.

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We derive a set of concise formulas to characterize the temperature sensitivity of holographic wavelength-division multiplexers-demultiplexers (H-MUX's-H-DMUX's). The normalized parameters such as dispersion abilities, central wavelength shift rate, and variations of insertion loss hold for general grating-based wavelength-division multiplexing-demultiplexing (WDM-WDDM) structures. The results are applicable to both wide-WDM-WDDM and dense ones working in 800-, 1300-, and 1550-nm optical wavelength windows, regardless of whether their input-output ports are single-mode or multimode fibers. Detailed analysis and experiments are carried out on a fully packaged four-channel H-MUX-H-DMUX. The experimental results at temperatures from 25 to 80 degrees C fit nicely with the theoretical prediction. We conclude that passive grating-based H-MUX's-H-DMUX's are promising for meeting the requirements on temperature sensitivity in optical data communications and telecommunications. Most of the analysis can be applied to other types of Bragg-grating-based WDM-WDDM.