Acrylate-based optical waveguides have been fabricated with optical loss of 0.5 dB/cm at 1300 nm by means of a new material system that ensures stable optical and mechanical properties over a wide temperature range. No increase in loss was measured after 500 h at temperatures up to 150 degrees C, and there was no significant increase in loss during short (<5 min) temperature excursions to 300 degrees C for bonding. Single-mode waveguides were fabricated with refractive indices for core and clad of 1.505 and 1.500, respectively, so that the mode field is very similar to that of single-mode silica fiber. Guides were fabricated on both planar and structured substrates of Si and GaAs as well as on substrates coated with metals and dielectrics. Fabrication involved spin coating and UV exposure to cross-link the polymer, but the substrate temperature did not exceed 180 degrees C. With this method guides could be fabricated on a range of substrates up to 125 cm in diameter, including those with multilayer metallization for multichip modules, providing optical interconnect capability. Microprism reflecting surfaces were fabricated in the waveguides to couple light out normal to the substrate. All the processing was compatible with normal semiconductor fabrication.

Non linear optical (NLO) polymers have great potential to be fabricated into integrated electro-optic (E/O) devices for use as high speed electro-optic (E/O) switches, modulators and interconnects in computer and communication systems [1,2]. The fabrication of practical integrated E/O devices requires a material system that meets the final device requirements and can be processed using standard fabrication technologies [3]. Applications of polymer E/O devices in electronic systems have been limited by the relatively low thermal stability and poor processability of non linear optical (NLO) polymers. This paper describes a thermally stable electro-optic material system and the fabrication process to make compact integrated E/O devices for application in electronic systems. This material system consists of high thermal stability polyimide core and cladding materials. The active NLO material is a side chain polyimide that uses a new high activity and high thermal stability chromophore.

Electro-optic polymers are of great interest for inserting photonic elements into electronic systems. Recently much progress has been made in both materials and processing. These polymers must have low optical loss, high mechanical integrity, low processing cost, and high temperature stability. In the first part of our talk, we present our work to produce etched single mode buried channel waveguides in an all polymide system. We have chosen polyimide because of its high temperature stability. Optical losses and waveguide characteristics are described as a function of waveguide width and index of refraction difference between core and cladding.Mach Zehnder modulators fabricated using a DCM-polyrnide core are also described. The waveguide cores are etched and fully embedded in a polyimide cladding. The active arms of the modulator are poled using parallel plate poling. The electro-optic properties of the Mach Zehnder are described operating at 830nni. Photobleached DCM waveguides are also describe. A new high temperature chromophore is presented.

Broad band services such as high speed, wide band data transmission or video communication are expected to used widely in future computing applications. As data transmission capacity increases, throughput requirements of the module will need to increase. Many parallel lines transmitting many gigabytes of data or lines that are multiplexed and transmitting at very high data rates will be required in the future.