Abstract
Flexible ultra-compact low-loss optical waveguides play a vital role in the development of soft photonics. The search for suitable materials and innovative fabrication techniques to achieve low loss long polymer optical waveguides and interconnects has proven to be challenging. In this paper, we demonstrate the fabrication of submicron optical waveguides in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using divinylbenzene (DVB) as the photopolymerizable monomer through two-photon polymerization (2PP). We show that the commercial oxime ester photoinitiator Irgacure OXE02 is suitable for triggering the DVB photopolymerization, resulting in a stable and controllable fabrication process for the fabrication of defect-free, 5-cm long waveguides. We further explore a multi-track fabrication strategy to enlarge the waveguide core size up to ~3 μm for better light confinement and reduced cross-talk. In these waveguides, we measured a refractive index contrast on the order of 0.005 and a transmission loss of 0.1 dB/cm at 710 nm wavelength.
Highlights
Optical waveguides are one of the most important photonic components indispensable in many of today’s technologies [1,2]
Single-mode optical waveguides have been fabricated through direct laser writing (DLW), soft lithography, and thermal curing methods using poly-siloxane and other commercially available polymer materials [16,17,18,19]
We investigated the finished samples of isolated single waveguides using a phase-contrast microscope (Olympus IX-71, Hamburg, Germany) to verify the formation of the poly-DVB waveguides embedded in the PDMS framework (Figure 3a,c)
Summary
Optical waveguides are one of the most important photonic components indispensable in many of today’s technologies [1,2]. The development of new materials and novel fabrication technologies for the realization of optical waveguides have attracted great attention. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is an elastomer of fundamental technological importance; because of its physical and chemical properties, and because of its easy handling. It is widely used for the realization of optical waveguides by combining hot embossing and standard soft lithography processes [20,21,22]. These methods are generally constrained to the fabrication of two-dimensional structures. The implementation of miniaturized photonic components with increased integration density calls for new, versatile fabrication technologies, which enable the formation of arbitrary submicron 3D shapes within a bulk material, such as two-photon DLW
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