Local excitation and collection in polymeric fluorescent microstructures

Abstract

Integrated photonics has gained attention in recent years due to its wide range of applications which span from biology to optical communications. The use of polymer-based platforms for photonic devices is of great interest because organic compounds can be easily incorporated to polymers, enabling modifications to the system physical properties. The two-photon polymerization technique has emerged as an interesting tool for the production of three-dimensional polymeric microstructures. However, for their further incorporation in photonic devices it is necessary to develop methods to perform optical excitation and signal collection on such microstructures. With such purpose, we demonstrate approaches to perform local excitation and collection in polymeric microstructures doped with fluorescent dyes, employing tapered fibers. The obtained results indicate that fiber tapers are suitable to couple light in and out of fluorescent polymeric microstructures, paving the way for their incorporation in photonic devices. We also show that microstructures doped with more than one dye can be used as built-in broadband light sources to photonic circuits and their emission spectrum can be tuned by the right choice of the excitation position.