Technology and realization of metallic curved waveguide mirrors in polymer film waveguides based on anisotropic plasma etching

Abstract

Curved waveguide mirrors acting in the same way as cylindrical lenses are fabricated in a polymer film waveguide. The waveguide material used is Cyclotene 3022™ (bisbenzocyclobutene) developed by the Dow Chemical Company. The waveguide mirror structure is dry etched into the film waveguide employing electron cyclotron resonance reactive ion etching. To enhance their reflectivity the vertical dry-etched sidewalls are metallized. Curved polymer film waveguide mirrors showing a reflectivity of 75% are realized.

Numerical Investigation and Prediction of Simultaneous Pulse-shaping and Mode-locking of Semiconductor Lasers

“…film-waveguide-based solution (again using curved film-waveguide mirrors [19] instead of transmissive film lenses). film-waveguide-based solution (again using curved film-waveguide mirrors [19] instead of transmissive film lenses).…”

“…Again in an external pulse-shaper scheme we introduced two additional curved film-waveguide mirrors to form a 2-'lens' filmtelescope for spreading the spectrum over a larger angle, as sketched in Fig. 3 lower left the concept for the metallized curved film-waveguide mirrors [19] serving as imaging elements is sketched. We suggested a 1.6 μπι thick polymer waveguide on a silica substrate -using the polymer benzocyclobutene (BCB) from DOW Chemicals (trade name Cyclotene™) with refractive index η » 1.55 [20].…”