Inorganic–organic hybrid polymer optical planar waveguides for micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS)

Abstract

The paper reports on the fabrication and characterisation of three types of OrmoClear, OrmoClear®HI01 XP and OrmoClear®FX hybrid polymer optical planar waveguides deposited on glass substrate. The design of the optical planar waveguides was done using a modified dispersion equation; waveguiding properties and refractive indices were measured by dark mode spectroscopy at five wavelengths: 473, 632.8, 964, 1311 and 1552 nm; the measurement showed that the OrmoClear HI01 XP had a higher refractive index value (1.582 at 1552 nm) than the OrmoClear polymer (1.537 at 1552 nm). Optical scattering losses of the waveguides were measured by the fibre scanning method; the measurement showed that the average values of the optical losses of the OrmoClear HI01 XP (0.48 dB/cm) were lower than those of the OrmoClear FX (0.64 dB/cm) and the OrmoClear polymer (0.76 dB/cm) for the measured wavelengths 964, 1311 and 1552 nm. Our measurement showed that the OrmoClear HI01 XP would allow the implementation of the MOEMS structures with higher integration density also in the case of such commonly used substrates as e.g. silica-on-silicon and that our approach would make possible to use low-cost and feasibly elaborated hybrid-polymer-based structures instead of the widely used semiconductor approach.