Large-scale integration of electro-optic polymer devices

Abstract

Organic electro-optic (EO) polymer materials offer exciting new opportunities in integrated optics. The electronic1 EO effect in organic materials yields large EO coefficients, low dispersion, and low dielectric constants.2 EO polymer materials have been modulated flat to 40 GHz and exhibit few fundamental limits for ultrafast modulation and switching. Polymeric integrated optic materials also offer great fabrication flexibility. The materials are spin-coatable into high quality, multilayer films, and can be patterned, metallized, and poled. Channel waveguides and integrated optic circuits can be defined by the poling process itself3, by photochemistry of the EO polymer4-5, or by a variety of well understood micro-machining techniques. Multi-layer integrated optic waveguide structures can be fabricated in much the same manner as Si-substrate, multilayer multichip modules. To date, EO polymer materials have been used to fabricate high-speed Mach-Zehnder modulators6, directional couplers7, Fabry-Perot etalons8, and even multitap devices9.