Abstract
The paper reports on the fabrication and characterisation of free-standing multimode optical epoxy polymer waveguides consisting of a core made of EpoCore and EpoClad polymer cladding and cover protection layers. The 50 × 50 μm2 rectangular waveguides are intended for short-reach optical interconnection and optimised for an operating wavelength of 850 nm. The waveguides of the proposed shapes were fabricated by a standard photolithography process on a silicon substrate provided with a Poly(vinyl alcohol) thin layer. The free-standing structure was then achieved by peeling the deposited EpoClad/EpoCore/EpoClad structures of that substrate. The optical scattering losses of the created planar waveguides, measured by the fibre probe technique at 632.8 and 964 nm, were 0.30 dB cm−1 at 632.8 nm and 0.17 dB cm−1 at 964 nm. Propagation optical loss measurements for rectangular waveguides were performed by the cut-back method and the best samples had optical losses below 0.55 dB cm−1 at 850 and 1310 nm.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Epsilon Programme of the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, Project no. TH01020276, and by the CTU Grant no. SGS17/188/OHK3/3T/13.
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Prajzler, V., Neruda, M., Jašek, P. et al. The properties of free-standing epoxy polymer multi-mode optical waveguides. Microsyst Technol 25, 257–264 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-018-3960-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-018-3960-9