Heat shielding of temperature sensitive optical waveguide components

摘要

A number of optical components being developed exhibit, due to the material used in their fabrication, temperature sensitive properties. These properties necessitate that the component is accurately controlled in temperature, in certain cases to +/- 0.1℃ (ambient temperature 0℃-70℃). Using standard techniques this temperature control can be made especially difficult when the material being controlled has a very low thermal conductivity, for example devices made using Lithium Niobate or Polymers. In this paper the thermal aspects of the packaging of these materials are analysed and a heat shielding technique is proposed which is capable of controlling the temperature of the component extremely accurately. Extensive Finite Element Analysis is used to demonstrate the improved performance of the technique. Details of prototype construction and results for these prototypes with Lithium Niobate and Polymer devices are reported and discussed.