A digital thermo-optic 2x2 switch based on nonlinear optic polymer

摘要

Abstract: A digital thermo-optic (t.o) 2$MUL@2 switch based on nonlinear optic (nlo) polymer is presented. The switch exploits a favorable combination of several attractive properties of nlo-polymers: a strong sensitivity for photochemical bleaching, a poor heat conduction and a large t.o.-effect. The bleaching is used to fabricate optical channel waveguides. Mode-sorting waveguides are used to obtain a digital switching behavior. Switching is performed by utilizing the t.o.-effect. For polymers this effect is an order of magnitude larger than for other materials used in integrated optics. The poor heat conduction of polymers results in switching with a low power dissipation.!3