Development of Polymeric Materials for Waveguide Components

摘要

The scalability to mass production and low cost are two driving forces towards multimode waveguide technologies. Organic-inorganic hybrid materials realized by sol-gel technology are promising choices for the fabrication of integrated optical circuits. This paper describes fabrication and characterization of the photo-patternable materials that are based on the sol-gel technology. The materials can be processed directly, using UV lithographic processing. Tailored polymeric materials are achieved, avoiding the use of the previously developed pre-hydrolyzed zirconium sol-gel precursors, which exhibit a lack of environmental stability. Films, which behave as a negative tone photoresist under UV-exposure, are fabricated by the spin-coating method on various substrates. The procedure shows the possibility for tailoring the refractive index and birefringence of the materials by varying the composition concentrations of the hybrid polymer system. Refractive indices vary from 1.4770 to 1.4950. The synthesized material also exhibits the possibility for birefringence optimization depending on the composition concentrations. The direct lithography process was demonstrated on various substrate materials (i.e., silicon wafer, glass, quartz, as well as flexible plastics, LTCC and semiconductor materials). The film waveguides are characterized by using of prism coupling technique at various wavelengths. The morphology of the optical structures is measured with a white-light interferometer.