Laser-fabricated low-loss single-mode raised-rib waveguiding devices in polymers

Crosslinkable fluorinated poly(arylene ethers) bearing phenyl ethynyl moiety for low‐loss polymer optical waveguide devices

“…[1][2][3] Polymers have especially emerged as a promising class of optical waveguide materials due to their easy processibility and costeffective technology. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The key requirements imposed on the polymeric materials include low optical transmission loss at the telecommunication wavelength region (1.3 and 1.55 m) and sufficient temperature and environmental stability to withstand typical fabrication processing and operation conditions.…”

“…In polymers, optical propagation losses at around 1.3 to 1.55 m wavelength are caused by the vibration absorption overtone of the COH bond, and can be decreased by substituting hydrogen with a heavy atom such as deuterium, fluorine, and chlorine atom. 8 Recently, the low-loss polymeric waveguide devices were fabricated using deuterated fluoromethacyrate, 5,6 UV curable fluorinated acrylate, 3 deuterated polysioxane, 7 and fluorinated polyimides. 9,10 Fluorinated poly(arylene ethers) developed for interlayer dielectric materials 11,12 are good candidate materials for the optical waveguide devices due to their excellent thermal stability, mechanical properties, low moisture absorption, and low inherent optical absorption at the near-infrared region.…”

Flexible polymeric rib waveguide with self-align couplers system

“…4 The most important elements of integrated optics are waveguides. 5 Various polymers and fabrication techniques have been reported, such as photoexposure and reactive ion etching (RIE), 6 electron-beam direct writing, 7 hot embossing, 2 laser direct writing, 8 molding, 9 and photobleaching. 10 In this paper, a different and simpler process to fabricate flexible elastomeric multimode waveguides with a selfaligned coupler system is presented.…”

All-optical crossbar switch using wavelength division multiplexing and vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

“…It is not difficult to construct an optical combiner network with polymer waveguides. 2 ϫ 1 Y couplers can easily be constructed in polymer waveguides, 15,16,26 and these Y couplers can be combined to construct a binary tree optical combiner network. A binary tree combiner successively combines the signals from each input source into a single optical waveguide.…”