Abstract
We report the fabrication and the optical characterization of a hybrid tunable integrated optical filter. It consists of a diffused ion-exchanged channel waveguide on a borosilicate glass substrate with a cover of the same glass to form a gap filled with a holographic grating. The grating morphology, called POLICRYPS (POlymer LIquid CRYstal Polymer Slices), is made of alternating stripes of polymer and liquid crystal acting as overlayer for the underneath waveguide. The filter structure includes aluminum coplanar electrodes to electrically control the grating properties, allowing the tunability of the filter. The electric driving power required to tune the filter obtained was in the range of submilliwatts due to the efficient liquid crystal electro-optic effect.
Highlights
Research of novel electro-optic materials has been driven to fabricate low cost optoelectronic devices for different optical system applications
We report the fabrication and the optical characterization of a hybrid tunable integrated optical filter
The grating morphology, called POLICRYPS (POlymer LIquid CRYstal Polymer Slices), is made of alternating stripes of polymer and liquid crystal acting as overlayer for the underneath waveguide
Summary
Research of novel electro-optic materials has been driven to fabricate low cost optoelectronic devices for different optical system applications. Since the refractive index of LC used for composite gratings ranges from 1.45 to 1.6 they can be combined with either polymeric or glass optical waveguides which are simple and cheap to fabricate Such an hybrid approach can be proposed as a low cost alternative to the different technologies developed in the past decades such as electro-optically [12] or acoustooptic tunable filters/switches on LiNbO3 [13] or in fibers [14]. In this paper the first demonstration of an optical tunable filter made of a novel Bragg holographic grating with a POLICRYPS morphology written over a channel ion-exchanged waveguide diffused in BK7 glass is described The novelty of such an integrated optic tunable filter with respect to the state of the art is the combination of an organic electro-optic composite grating structure with a passive glass channel waveguide realized with a simple and low cost technology. Main details of the fabrication process and the preliminary results of the optical response of the integrated optical filter proposed here are reported
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