Reliability of polymeric photonic devices

摘要

Several passive and active polymeric guided wave devices have been made by deposition of a multilayer of polymers with different refractive indices onto a substrate. Lateral confinement of the (channel) waveguides has been' obtained via the photobleaching technique applying masks containing the desired waveguide lay-out. The electro-optic effect has been induced via electric field poling. Switching voltages in the range 5-10 Volts at a wavelength of 1330 nm have been obtained, combined with extinction ratio's in excess of 20 dB. For the passive devices, waveguide propagation losses around 0.4 dB/cm were observed; for active devices, values were around 1 dB/cm. Important features are the stability and reliability of the polymeric devices; these issues will be briefly discussed in this paper.