Optical Interconnect: Fully Embedded Etched Passive And Active Polyimide Waveguides And Devices

ABSTRACTElectro-optic polymers are of great interest for inserting photonic elements into electronic systems. Recently Much progress has been made in both materials and processing. These polymers must have low optical loss, high mechanical integrity, low processing cost, and high temperature stability. In the first part of our talk, we present our work to produce etched single mode buried channel waveguides in an all polymide system. We have chosen polyimide because of its high temperature stability. Optical losses and waveguide characteristics are described as a function of waveguide width and index ofrefraction difference between core and cladding.Mach Zehnder Modulators fabricated using a DCM-polymide core are also described The waveguide cores are etched and fully embedded in a polyimide cladding. The active arms of the modulator are poled using parallel plate poling. The electro-optic properties of the Mach Zehnder are described operating at 830nm. Photobleached DCM waveguides are also describe. A new high temperature chromophore is presented.