<title>Characterization of low-loss polymer modulators fabricated by laser ablation</title>

Abstract

Electro-optic (EO) channel waveguide polymer phase modulators made by laser ablation are described. The ablation technique is capable of forming low loss channel waveguides at rapid rates with endface quality suitable for fiber pigtailed devices. Loss measurements as well as SEM micrographs were taken to optimize this process. Optical losses of these channel waveguides (before poling) were measured to be 0.37 dB/cm (TM mode) and 0.33 dB/cm (TE mode) at 1.32 pm wavelength. The polymer used was poly(methyl methacrylate) with disperse Red 1 dye attached as a side chain at a concentration of 10 mole %. In the poled channel waveguide phase modulator, an EO coefficient (r33) of 10.5 pm/V was achieved with electrode poling and measured by a heterodyne detection system.

Polymeric Electro-optic Modulators: From Chromophore Design to Integration with Semiconductor Very Large Scale Integration Electronics and Silica Fiber Optics

“…Thus, we shall restrict our further remarks to reactive ion-etching techniques since such techniques are applicable to any polymeric nonlinear optical material and are, initially at least, the techniques preferred for fabricating buried channel nonlinear optical waveguides in a high µβ chromophore containing polymer thin films. Although polymeric waveguides have been fabricated by laser ablation techniques, 41,42 we refer the reader elsewhere for a review of these and other waveguide fabrication methods other than RIE. 1 The procedure for fabricating buried channel waveguides by reactive ion etching (RIE) is shown in Figure 18 (illustrated in detail for a disperse red 19 chromophore containing polyurethane polymer, PU-DR19).…”