• Puustinen, J.
• Pearce, S.
• Wang, M.
• Charlton, M.
• Lappalainen, J.
• Hiltunen, Marianne
• Karioja, Pentti
• Hiltunen, Jussi

Abstract

Polymers are important materials in fabrication ofphotonics devices due to their good optical properties,such as, high transmittivity, versatile processabilityalso at low temperatures allowing potential for low-costfabrication. A critical requirement in the fabrication ofintegrated optical devices has been selecting a mostsuitable method for patterning the ridge bounding theoptical mode in the waveguide. In this paper, we discussa UV-imprint fabrication of polymeric single-modewaveguides with different configurations: ridge type,inverted rib type and layered composite waveguides. Aridge waveguide type consists of a strip waveguidesuperimposed onto a slab waveguide made of the samematerial. When patterning a ridge by imprintingtechnique, a residual layer is formed underneath theimprinted ridges. A too thick residual layer might causea loss of propagation mode due to power leakage to theslab guide, which might require a subsequent etchingstep. In inverted rib waveguide structure, a groove ofcladding material is patterned by imprinting. This isfollowed by the filling of the groove with a corematerial. From the imprint fabrication point of view, thefabrication tolerances can be relaxed because theresidual slab layer underneath the waveguide can havearbitrary thickness. Besides fabrication of abovementioned waveguide structures, we also investigate thepossibility to produce composite waveguide devices bydepositing inorganic thin films with high-refractiveindex on UV-imprinted polymeric structures withlow-refractive. The purpose to use composite structuresis to manipulate the optical field distribution in waveguides.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• polymer
• thin film
• layered
• composite
• etching