Simple Fabrication and Processing of an All-Polymer Electrooptic Modulator

Emerging systems requiring large-scale manufacture and monolithic integration of photonic components have created demand for inexpensive and scalable processes for the production of conformal, low-drive voltage, and high bandwidth EO modulators. This paper discusses a device architecture for a phase modulator based on a recently developed organic EO material, IKD-1-50, using low-index, photocurable cladding layers on a Silicon platform. Theory and modeling for a TM waveguide and electrode configuration are presented, followed by the fabrication process and device characterization. The EO material serving as the core of the waveguide is poled using a poling and monitoring apparatus with procedures that were optimized for this material based on experimentation in simple slab-capacitor characterization devices. The challenges presented by the instability of OEOMs under common processing conditions have been addressed and a simple fabrication process has been developed using standard photolithography and reactive ion etching. The characterization methodology for phase modulators will be presented along with the results for modulators fabricated for this study. This study culminates in a V_πL of roughly 3.3 V·cm which is comparable with the record demonstrations in the literature for a TM-mode inverted ridge-waveguide-based EO modulator.