Fabrication of 17×17 box-like spectral response of an arrayed waveguide grating

Abstract

In the fabrication of a polymeric arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) device, the cores of the channels and the arrayed waveguides exhibit smooth trapezoid cross-sections instead of originally designed rectangular ones after reactive ion etching and steam-redissolution. By employing the Marcatili theory, a method called “equivalent energy flow method” is proposed for analyzing the transmission characteristics of the polymeric AWG with trapezoid core cross-sections. The AWG parameters have been fixed, and a 17×17 polymeric AWG multiplexer has been designed and fabricated. Experimental results show that the central wavelength is 1550.83 nm, and the bandwidth at half maximum is about 0.478 nm; insertion loss is 10 to 13 dB, and crosstalk is about −21 dB .