Abstract

An advanced planar polymer technology is proposed for DWDM components that address the needs of the telecom industry. We engineered high-performance organic polymers that exhibit state-of-the-art loss values, suppressed polarization effects, and exceptional stability. These materials can be readily made into planar single-mode waveguide structures of controlled geometries and modal profiles, and one class was especially formulated to enable the fabrication of Bragg gratings that exhibit total suppression of cladding mode loss and reflectivities in excess of 70 dB. The devices we describe include fixed and thermally tunable filtering elements based on planar polymer Bragg gratings.

© 1999 Optical Society of America