Advancements in passive planar lightwave circuits and hybrid integration devices

Planar silica device technology provides the ability to filter, route, switch, and attenuate optical signals for Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) based photonic networks. As network capacity expands there is a requirement to increase the complexity, scale and density of the functions whilst reducing cost. It is also important that both the optical performance and long term stability of the devices are not compromised. The following paper reviews recent progress on these types of devices for large-scale manufacture, concentrating on key performance parameters for filter type structures and hybrid integrated devices such as insertion loss and polarisation dependent loss (PDL). To cite this article: J.R. Bonar et al., C. R. Physique 4 (2003).