Abstract

Polymeric materials as well as organic crystals have generally higher and faster nonlinearities compared to the inorganic standard lithium niobate and are therefore ideally suited for high-speed modulators. Compared to poled polymers, organic single crystals are advantageous because of superior long-term thermal and photochemical stability combined with a higher chromophore concentration. Despite of several promising microfabrication techniques developed for organic single crystals (for a recent review see [1]), their growth as well as their structuring with adequate quality and precision for optical applications has remained challenging. We recently developed a new fabrication technique in which the melt of the organic material flows into predefined channels by capillary force and crystallizes there upon cooling. By this method it has already been shown that the growth of high-quality single-crystalline phase modulators from the melt is possible [2].

© 2009 IEEE