The continuing development of fiber-based network will depend on the availability of cheap, reliable and robust components for routing, switching and detection. Polymeric waveguides possess many advantages, such as fast response, low operating voltage, low propagation loss, low temperature process for fabrication, and good potential for integration with active device. Therefore, polymer materials have been widely employed for optical waveguide. And various techniques have been developed to fabricate the polymeric optical waveguide. They mainly include photolithography, compressive molding, laser direct writing, and electron-beam direct writing. As a conventional semiconductor process, photolithography is commonly used to pattern the polymeric waveguides. With this method, a reactive ion etching (RIE) technique has to be followed to form ridge waveguides. RIE etching polymer is very slow and difficult. Therefore, it is difficult to fabricate channel waveguide with this process. Also, the compressive molding process is always used to fabricate the ridge waveguide because it can not make the channel waveguide. Although having many advantages, the laser and electron-beam direct writing process require the expensive direct writing equipment and base on single-device fabrication. Therefore, they are expensive and are difficult for mass production. Moreover, the electron-beam direct writing can only be applied to electron-beam-sensitive polymer materials. In this paper, we present a novel vacuum filling process. It is simple, low-cost, easy to fabricate channel waveguide, good for mass production, and suitable for almost all polymer materials.
展开▼
