Design and fabrication of optical power splitters with large port count

Abstract

We design and fabricate compact, low loss, and high port-count optical power splitters of 1 × 128 and2 × 128 using silica-based planar lightwave circuit (PLC) technology on 6 inch quartz substrate. PLC tech­nology is mainly based on plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, photolithography, and etching. The measured results show that the insertion loss, uniformity, and wavelength-dependent loss of 1 × 128 and 2 × 128 optical power splitters are less than 23, 1.43, and 0.92 dB and 23.3, 1.8, and 1.3 dB, respectively, in the wavelength range from 1.26 to 1.65 mm. The polarization-dependent losses are less than 0.16 and 0.2 dB, respectively, in the wavelengths of 1.31, 1.49, and 1.55 mm.