Coupling ratio control of polymeric waveguide couplers by bending

Directional couplers are successfully fabricated on acrylic substrates using polymers synthesised from deuterated methacrylate and deuterated fluoromethacrylate monomers. The excess loss of a 50 mm long coupler is about 0.7 dB including waveguide and fibre coupling losses. A novel method is proposed for tuning the coupling ratio. By bending the coupler, high precision control of within 1% is attained without optical polarisation dependence.