Photobleached refractive index tapers in electrooptic polymer rib waveguides

Author

Geary, Kevin ; Kim, Seong-Ku ; Seo, Byoung-Joon ; Hung, Yu-Chueh ; Yuan, Wei ; Fetterman, Harold R.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Volume

18

Issue

1

fYear

2006

Firstpage

64

Lastpage

66

Abstract

Photobleached refractive index tapers in electrooptic polymer rib waveguides, which act as two-dimensional optical mode transformers, are investigated. One taper method involves a discrete step mask-shifting scheme with a fixed intensity UV light source. A second method utilizes a gray-scale mask to precisely control the intensity of UV light reaching each portion of the taper. Using a gray-scale mask, adiabatic refractive index tapers can be inscribed into electrooptic polymer waveguides in a single fabrication step with no scanning parts. Optimized taper profiles are derived and applications for their incorporation into passive-to-active waveguide transitions are described.

Keywords

electro-optical devices; integrated optics; optical polymers; optical saturable absorption; optical waveguides; refractive index; rib waveguides; UV light source; adiabatic refractive index tapers; discrete step mask-shifting; electrooptic polymer waveguides; fixed intensity light source; gray-scale mask; light intensity control; optimized taper profiles; passive-to-active waveguide transitions; photobleached tapers; refractive index tapers; rib waveguides; two-dimensional optical mode transformers; Electrooptical waveguides; Gray-scale; Light sources; Optical polymers; Optical refraction; Optical variables control; Optical waveguides; Photobleaching; Refractive index; Transformers; Electrooptic (EO) polymer waveguides; gray-scale mask; mode transformer; passive–active integration; photobleaching; refractive index taper;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2005.860044

Filename

1546038