Polymer-based devices for optical communications

Polymers are emerging as new alternative materials for optical communication devices. We developed two types of polymer-based devices for optical communications. One type is for ultra high-speed signal processing that uses nonlinear optical (NLO) polymers in such devices as electro-optic (EO) Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulators and EO 2x2 switches. The other is for WDM optical communications that use low-loss optical polymers in such devices as 1x2, 2x2, 4-arrayed 2x2 digital optical switches (DOSs) and 16x16 arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) routers. For these devices, we synthesized a polyetherimide-disperse red 1 (PET-DR1) side chain NLO polymer and a low-loss optical polymer known as fluorinated polyaryleneethers (FPAE). This paper presents the details of our development of these polymeric photonic devices considering all aspects from materials to packaging.