Fabrication and integration of micro-/nanoscale photonic devices and sensors for application-specific planar optical integrated circuit board

Abstract

We present the results of our study on the micro/nano-scale design and fabrication of optical waveguide devices, photonic devices and sensors to be integrated in the form of optical printed circuit boards (O-PCBs) for various application. Application-specific O-PCBs are composed of varied forms of optical wires and devices tailored to perform specific functions. In this paper, we present two examples of application specific O-PCB. One is an all-optical wavelength splitting triplexer module that we designed for subscriber network application and the other is a grating array that we designed for temperature-sensor application. The triplexer module consists of an array of cascaded directional couplers to split the wavelengths for passive optical network and signal distribution application and the grating array is designed for wavelength splitting and temperature sensing applications. The advantages of these devices are that they can be readily fabricated out of polymer materials by way of thermal or ultraviolet (UV) embossing (or imprinting) technique. Theoretical calculations provide design rules for these devices. The results suggest that O-PCB can be a viable and useful platform for integration of various photonic devices for sensor application.