Abstract

Polymer optical waveguides are attractive for fabricating economical and practical optoelectronic devices and interconnections in optical communication systems [1,2]. Channel waveguides, therefore, have been produced using several polymers such as poly(methyl methacrylate), polystylene, poly(organosiloxane), and polyimide [3-6]. One of the first priorities for polymer waveguides is high thermal stability so that soldering can be used in conventional device fabrication. Fluorinated polyimides are promising candidates for waveguide materials because they show high thermal stability and low optical loss near the IR wavelength region. We have previously developed novel fluorinated polyimides [7] and manufactured a single-mode optical waveguide for them by using conventional reactive ion etching (RIE) [8]. Moreover, we recently clarified that the refractive index of fluorinated polyimides can be controlled by electron beam irradiation [9], and that optical waveguides can thus be fabricated by direct electron beam writing (DEBW) [10,11]. This method is very useful because the fabrication process becomes simpler than when using RIE. In this paper, we propose a new optical waveguide fabricated by DEBW, which consists of a single material and a simple two-layer structure.

© 1995 Optical Society of America