The success of optical fiber technology continues to enable great advances in telecommunications. Among the more recent commercial developments have included the erbium doped fiber amplifier, 10 GB/sec time division multiplexing, and dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). In the near future two trends will dominate the continued growth of this technology (1) increased optical device functionality and (2) migration of increased bandwidth down to local loop and access levels of the network. Examples of increased functionality will include splitters and DWDMs with increased port counts, wavelength conversion, and matrix optical switching. Migration of bandwidth will require greater volumes of fundamental optical components such as power splitters and WDMs. We will discuss our polymeric optical device technology in light of both current and future telecom needs. We have developed a series of cross-linked polymers with intrinsic losses in the 1.55 micrometer window as low as 0.1 - 0.2 dB/cm. Singlemode waveguides can be made from these materials by photolithography or by molding. Our baseline materials, C20 and C21, are nonhalogenated polymers and exhibit waveguide losses at 1.55 micrometer of 1 to 1.5 dB/cm; by increasing the level of halogenation we can achieve waveguide losses as low as 0.3 dB/cm. These polymers exhibit excellent resistance to adverse environmental conditions, typified by the well-known Bellcore 85 degrees Celsius/85%RH soak test. One X sixteen and 1 X 8 power splitting devices made from C20/C21 have exhibited insertion losses of 11 dB and uniformities of plus or minus 0.3 dB at 1.3 micrometer. We have also invented a passive alignment technology that allows optical fibers to be 'snap-fit' aligned with the optical waveguide, which reduces the difficulty and cost of pigtailing. Finally, we discuss our approach to DWDM which takes advantage of our ability to precisely control the refractive index of our polymers by proper selection of the comonomers.
An advanced polymeric waveguide technology was developed for affordable WDM components that address the needs of both the Telecom and the Datacom industries. We engineered high- performance organic polymers that can be readily made into both multimode and single-mode optical waveguide structures of controlled numerical aperture and geometry. These materials are formed from highly-crosslinked acrylate monomers with specific linkages that determine properties such as flexibility, toughness, loss, and environmental stability. These monomers are intermiscible, providing for precise adjustment of the refractive index from 1.3 to 1.6. In polymer form, they exhibit state-of-the-art loss values, high thermal stability, high humidity resistance, low dispersion and low birefringence. Waveguides are formed photolithographically, with the liquid monomer mixture polymerizing upon illumination in the UV via either mask exposure or laser direct writing. A wide range of rigid and flexible substrates can be used, including glass, quartz, oxidized silicon, glass-filled epoxy printed circuit board substrate, and flexible polyimide film. Waveguiding structures measuring tens of inches in length can be produced on computer boards, and guides that are meters long can be printed on rolls of plastic. We describe the fabrication of both Bragg gratings and waveguide grating routes in our polymers for filtering and demultiplexing applications in Telecom WDM systems. In Datacom, we describe polymeric components that we produced for aerospace WDM sensor systems. The importance of CAD tools in designing WDM devices is emphasized in this work. We further discuss the low-cost manufacturing of WDM components in an industrial environment.
An advanced versatile low-cost polymeric waveguide technology has been developed for optoelectronic applications. This technology is based upon new polymeric materials for ultra-low-loss optical interconnection, particularly for the key wavelengths of 0.83, 1 .3, and 1 .55 microns. Development of these materials has required a thorough understanding of fundamental principles of optical absorption due to both vibrational and electronic resonant absorptions. We have thus created materials with measured losses at 830 nm which are in the range ofO.02 dB/cm. At longer wavelengths, the losses can be higher due to the vibrational absorption within the polymer. However through careful selection of chemical structure, polymeric materials with intrinsic loss below 0.08 dB/cm have been demonstrated at 1 .55 micron wavelength. These high-performance organic polymers can be readily made into both multimode and single-mode optical waveguide structures with controlled numerical aperture (NA) and geometry. We will discuss the use of these materials in a variety of passive photonic devices.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.