Emission properties of distributed-feedback plastic wavguide lasers fabricated with imprint lithography

Plastic waveguide laser devices with the distributed-feedback (DFB) resonators were fabricated using an imprint lithography technique, and their emission characteristics were investigated. In a device, in which the DFB grating vector was along the propagation vector of the channel waveguide, the wavelength-selectable DFB lasing emission with the horizontally polarization was observed. When the grating vector deviated from the propagation vector of the waveguide, the emission wavelength showed a red shift due to the effective increase in the grating pitch. Furthermore the polarization direction of the output emission was found to be inclined from the horizontal axis. This polarization characteristic would come from selective excitation of a TE-TM hybrid propagation mode in the channel waveguide.