Title :
Fabrication of ridge waveguides by UV embossing and stamping of sol-gel hybrid materials
Author :
Woo-Soo Kim ; Jong-Hwan Lee ; Sang-Yung Shin ; Byeong-Soo Bae ; Young-Cheol Kim
Author_Institution :
Korea Adv. Inst. of Sci. & Technol., Dae-Jeon, South Korea
Abstract :
Multimode large core (45×35 μm2) optical ridge waveguides are fabricated in the room temperature by ultraviolet (UV) imprinting of soft rubber template with the organic-inorganic sol-gel hybrid materials. The fabrication processes may be either well-known UV embossing or stamping. A new sol-gel hybrid material that is thermally stable has been developed for the fabrication of low-loss optical waveguides. The UV curable methacrylic sol-gel hybrid material is used for the core layer and fluorinated methacrylic sol-gel hybrid material is used for the cladding layer. The optical propagation loss of fabricated waveguide measured by the cutback method is 0.36 dB/cm at 850 nm and the surface roughness of waveguide is about 5 /spl Aring/ root mean square.
Keywords :
infrared spectra; optical fabrication; optical losses; optical waveguides; organic-inorganic hybrid materials; ridge waveguides; sol-gel processing; surface roughness; UV curable metacrylic sol-gel hybrid material; UV embossing; UV imprinting; cladding layer; cutback method; fabrication process; large core multimode optical ridge waveguide; low-loss optical waveguides; multimode large core optical ridge waveguides; optical propagation loss; organic-inorganic sol-gel hybrid material; ridge waveguides; room temperature; soft rubber template; sol-gel hybrid materials; stamping; surface roughness; ultraviolet imprinting; Embossing; Optical device fabrication; Optical losses; Optical materials; Optical propagation; Optical waveguides; Organic materials; Propagation losses; Rubber; Temperature;
Journal_Title :
Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/LPT.2004.831053