Abstract
Low-loss polymer materials incorporating fluorinated compounds have been utilized for the investigation of various functional optical devices useful for optical communication and optical sensor systems. Since reliability issues concerning the polymer device have been resolved, polymeric waveguide devices have been gradually adopted for commercial application systems. The two most successfully commercialized polymeric integrated optic devices, variable optical attenuators and digital optical switches, are reviewed in this paper. Utilizing unique properties of optical polymers which are not available in other optical materials, novel polymeric optical devices are proposed including widely tunable external cavity lasers and integrated optical current sensors.
Highlights
Research on polymeric integrated optical devices has spanned over two decades
Optical waveguide technology based on polymers play a major role in integrating all of the optical devices on a single chip in order to facilitate optical sensor fabrication and reduce production expenses, which are critical for expansion of the optical current sensor market, and to open new application areas
We have recently demonstrated a polarization rotated reflection interferometry (PRRI)-optical current transducer (OCT) by assembling several polymeric waveguide components along with fiber-optic components in order to assure that the polymer devices are appropriate for constructing the reflection interferometer [56,57]
Summary
Research on polymeric integrated optical devices has spanned over two decades. Originally this research was initiated by the material scientists who proposed conjugated organic molecules consisting of electron doner-acceptor molecules leading to permanent electric dipoles. Large index tuning is capable in polymer devices so as to enable novel device structures such as the digital optical switches (DOS), for which 10 times larger refractive index change is required than the other interferometric switches [9]. As optical communication evolves toward large bandwidth capacity using many wavelengths, low-power, small-foot-print array devices based on polymer waveguides, they will gradually dominate the commercial market. In terms of optical signal crosstalk, because of the limit of the adiabatic transition in asymmetric Y-branch waveguides, polymer switches have struggled to compete To overcome this limitation, a VOA section was cascaded after the switch on a single chip so as to reduce the remaining crosstalk light [14]. Optical waveguide technology based on polymers play a major role in integrating all of the optical devices on a single chip in order to facilitate optical sensor fabrication and reduce production expenses, which are critical for expansion of the optical current sensor market, and to open new application areas
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