EO polymer materials and devices: from research to reality

With further development, electro-optic polymers have the potential to far-out distance inorganic materials in figures-of-merit, and, in fact, already do in some key properties, such as length bandwidth products. Polymers are not likely to ever exhibit insertion loss as low as glass for passive devices. However, intrinsic performance of polymers, measured against other materials, is not sufficient for judging the potential of the technology. Overall production costs, balanced against performance, will determine the utilization of polymer waveguide technologies