Polymers, packaging, and optical waveguides

摘要

The class of polymers we have been looking at here at the University of Colorado is a class of commercially available polymers to which we can ail commercially available dyes. The additive dye serves two purposes. One is to allow us to definewaveguide channels in the polymeric material using starslad integrated circuit-style photolithography. Another is to allow us to make the polymer into an electrooptic material by aligning the dye molecules in a preferred direction and thereby endowing the material with an electrooptic coefficient and thus opening up the possibility of using the polymer to serve as an active medium for modulation and/or switching/routing. We have also been able to add amounts of rare earth dopants to commercial polymers,opening up the possibility of active optical components with optical gain and perhaps even sources within the polymer. It appears that these commercially available additives, which can be added by simply mixing solutions, do not significantly affectpackaging functions. The question arises as to how, if at all, such material systems can impact electronic switching operations. These matters will be addressed in this talk through a presentation involving some simulation results along with someexperimental results.