Optical Polymer Waveguides Fabricated by Roll-to-Plate Nanoimprinting Technique

Vaclav Prajzler,Milos Neruda,Pavel Kulha,Sonja Kopp,Vaclav Chlupaty,Michael Mühlberger

doi:10.3390/nano11030724

Vaclav Prajzler, Milos Neruda + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/nano11030724

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Abstract

The paper reports on the properties of UV-curable inorganic-organic hybrid polymer multimode optical channel waveguides fabricated by roll-to-plate (R2P) nanoimprinting. We measured transmission spectra, refractive indices of the applied polymer materials, and optimized the R2P fabrication process. Optical losses of the waveguides were measured by the cut-back method at wavelengths of 532, 650, 850, 1310, and 1550 nm. The lowest optical losses were measured at 850 nm and the lowest average value was 0.19 dB/cm, and optical losses at 1310 nm were 0.42 dB/cm and 0.25 dB/cm at 650 nm respectively. The study has demonstrated that nanoimprinting has great potential for the implementation of optical polymer waveguides not only for optical interconnection applications.

Highlights

Integrated optical and photonic devices are playing an increasingly important role in optical communication networks, optical interconnections, optical data centers and the application of optical sensors [1]
We presented polymer multimode optical waveguides with the dimension of the channels 50 × 50 μm fabricated by the photolithography process
PDMS stamps were fabricated from Sylgard 184 elastomer using a nickel master mold and the process was optimized for fabrication optical channels with dimension 50 × 50 μm and 250 μm pitch

Summary

Introduction

Integrated optical and photonic devices are playing an increasingly important role in optical communication networks, optical interconnections, optical data centers and the application of optical sensors [1]. The importance of these integrated optical devices grows even more due to the rapid widespread communication devices for smart cities data communications using internet applications in the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) and Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Optical planar waveguides are the basic building blocks for the implementation of these optics and photonic structures and devices. Integrated optics and photonic devices fabricated from polymers have been subject to intense research in recent years [3]. The advantages of polymer materials compared above mention materials are easier fabrication processes and that lead to developed optics devices with significantly lower material and production costs

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