Fabrication of Ridge Waveguides by UV Embossing and Stamping of Sol-Gel Hybrid Materials

W.-S. Kim, J.-H. Lee, S.-Y. Shin, B.-S. Bae, Y.-C. Kim
2004 IEEE Photonics Technology Letters  
Multimode large core (45 35 m 2 ) 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
more » ... ed 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 A root mean square. Index Terms-Large core multimode waveguide, organic-inorganic hybrid materials, photo and thermally curable, polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) mold, ultraviolet (UV) stamping and embossing.
doi:10.1109/lpt.2004.831053 fatcat:b4xwyd4efvfrxg7wpjpgmvz63e