We propose a simple ultraviolet (UV) writing technique for the fabrication of buried waveguide devices, which employs a UV lamp as the light source and commercial benzocyclobutene (BCB) and epoxy OPTOCAST 3505 as the core and cladding materials, respectively. We show that the light emitted from the UV lamp can induce a large refractive-index change (up to 0.012) in BCB, while a negligible index change in the epoxy, which makes possible the writing of buried waveguide devices in BCB by exposing an epoxy-clad BCB film to the UV light through a mask. We demonstrate this technique experimentally with straight channel waveguides, Y-junction waveguide branches, and long-period waveguide gratings. The propagation loss of a typical fabricated waveguide is 1.6 dB/cm at 1550 nm and the polarization-dependent loss is 0.4 dB/cm.
We demonstrate a simple UV-writing technique for the fabrication of buried waveguides using a UV lamp as the source and benzocyclobutene (BCB) and epoxy OPTOCAST 3553 as the waveguide materials. We find that the refractive index of the core material BCB can be increased by as much as 0.01 after UV exposure, while the refractive index of the cladding material epoxy OPTOCAST 3553 is not affected by the UV light. Based on these material properties, buried channel waveguide devices are formed by UV irradiation of an epoxy-clad BCB slab waveguide through a mask. We demonstrate the technique with a straight single-mode waveguide, a Y-junction waveguide branch, and a long-period waveguide grating. The propagation loss of the waveguide fabricated by this technique is 1.8 dB/cm at 1550 nm and the polarization-dependent loss is 0.15 dB/cm.
In this paper, we derive the general condition for the realization of a temperature-insensitive resonance wavelength of a long-period waveguide grating and present numerical examples for gratings formed in polymer channel waveguides. We show that, by controlling the thickness of the waveguide cladding, zero temperature sensitivity can be achieved with core and cladding materials that have significantly different thermo-optic coefficients. To verify our finding, we follow the temperature-insensitivity condition and fabricate a polymer grating with a core material that has a thermo-optic coefficient about twice as that of the cladding material. The temperature sensitivity of the fabricated grating is within ±0.15 nm/°C over a temperature range of ~15°C, which is more than an order of magnitude lower than those of previously reported gratings fabricated with the same materials.
In this paper, we report the design and fabrication of a long-period waveguide grating (LPWG) in a polymer ridge waveguide, which has a benzocyclobutene (BCB) core and an epoxy cladding of the same width. We first apply an accurate perturbation theory to evaluate the phase-matching condition of the grating and derive simple analytical expressions to highlight the temperature dependence of the resonance wavelength. The possibility of achieving a polarization-independent resonance wavelength is also discussed. We next describe the fabrication of an LPWG in a BCB/epoxy ridge waveguide by a UV-writing technique using a KrF excimer laser and present the transmission spectra of the grating measured at different UV dosages. By controlling the waveguide width, we produce an LPWG with a resonance wavelength that is polarization insensitive at a specific temperature. The temperature dependence of the LPWG is also discussed. Our results provide a better understanding of the operation principle of LPWGs, which should facilitate the design of LPWG-based devices for various applications.
In this paper, we present a novel coupling method, direct coupling method, for double metal-cladding waveguide which is free from using the prism, grating or other coupling elements. The double metal-cladding waveguide used in our experiment is a metal-dielectric-metal three layer structure. Through ATR scanning technique, we demonstrate that light could be directly coupled into the waveguide successfully with this structure. The direct coupling method not only avoids the difficulty of grating fabrication process in grating coupling method, but also the coupling gap adjustment problem in prism coupling method. The application of this coupling method keeps advantages of the prism coupling technique in the optical parameters measurement for thin films. It also has some extra advantages. Since high order modes could be coupled into thick film waveguide while it is hard for prism coupling technique, the thickness of thick films (0. lmm—lmm) can be determined. Moreover, light can be coupled at any position on the surface of the waveguide, thus it can be used to detect almost the whole area of the film. Our experimental results agree well with the theoretical prediction.
In this paper, we present a new method used for the recovery of the refractive-index profile of an optical waveguide from the measured coupling angles. Two improvements have been made in our method. First, we determine the surface refractive index of the inhomogeneous waveguide by experiment technique, instead of usual numerical methods. Second, we present a new fitting criterion which is based on the accurate ATMM (Analytic Transfer Matrix Method), but not approximate WKB theory. Experimental results demonstrate our method could give better results compared with the previous techniques.
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