Prospects for electro-optic polymer devices

Compared to lithium niobate, poled electro-optic polymers have many potential advantages for active optical waveguide devices. These include the ability to spin cast optical waveguides on a variety of substrates, low materials cost, the ability to fabricate layered structures with buried electrodes, compatibility with a number of lithographic and etching techniques to form channel waveguides, low temperature processing, and the potential to integrate active EO polymer waveguide devices with electronic components. The key questions that must be answered to assess the viability of electro-optic polymer device technology are: (1) Can high performance devices such as phase modulators, amplitude modulators, and directional coupler switches be made? (2) If these devices can be made, can they last for years at elevated use temperatures and can they tolerate the temperature excursions typically encountered in packaging and electronics fabrication? (3) Can they be integrated with other optical components and with electronic components? (4) Can they be fabricated, integrated, and packaged at low cost?