Direct photoinscription of planar integrable polymer waveguide gratings

Summary form only given. Prospective applications of azopolymers in planar integrated photonic signal processing have attracted a great deal of recent attention. One particularly desirable enabling feature of this class of materials is the controlled formation of periodic surface relief gratings upon exposure to an optical interference pattern. Azopolymers deposited on a low-index transparent substrate and processed in this fashion simultaneously provide waveguiding and wavelength-selective optical feedback. We have explored grating-assisted coupling of light into a waveguide formed using an optical interferometric technique deployed in an integrable, low-cost materials platform. Realization of both waveguide and the grating in polymers is conductive to photonic integrated circuit realization. Furthermore, since these gratings couple light almost perpendicularly incident onto the waveguide, they may be useful in coupling of light between different layers of circuits.