Technique to Ease the Fabrication Tolerance of Integrated Optical Power Splitters

摘要

Fabrication tolerances and sidewall scattering losses in self imaging waveguidedevices are ameliorated by a partial etch fabrication technique. Using a modal decomposition model, we find that the self imaging plane's depth of focus increases with a reduction in etch depth. A broad depth of focus in the self image plane relaxes the fabrication tolerance of the device's critical width dimension for a specified device performance. Trade offs for this increased depth of focus include a modest increase in device length and a slight reduction in peak coupling efficiency.