Femtosecond writing of waveguides and waveguide network components

authored by

Dmitrii Perevoznik, Uwe Morgner

Abstract

Writing waveguides with femtosecond laser is a very promising technique and has already proven its performance in glasses and crystals. At the same time, writing waveguides in polymers is a just developing field, and not too much work has been reported so far [1]. Polymer material can offer the potential to create low-cost and complex structures inside the volume of the material. It was demonstrated before that it is possible to make low-loss waveguides inside polymer material with a femtosecond laser by writing irradiation lines with parallel orientation with fixed gap between them [2]. The refractive index increase is induced by material compression and stress-related effects which are caused by a quickly expanding plasma core. Here we want to show different geometries of waveguides and also waveguides which are sensing the surface of the substrate and Y-splitters, which could possibly be used for applications such as sensors and lab-on-a-chip devices. When the irradiation lines form a hexagon or quadratic geometry (see Fig. 1(a) and Fig 1(b)) it leads to an increasing densification and as a result higher refractive index. As a consequence, the higher refractive index will reduce bend losses in waveguides.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Quantum Optics
PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering - Innovation Across Disciplines
Hannover Centre for Optical Technologies (HOT)

External Organisation(s)

Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH)

Type

Conference contribution

No. of pages

1

Publication date

2019

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Spectroscopy, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Instrumentation, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Computer Networks and Communications

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1109/CLEOE-EQEC.2019.8871550 (Access: Closed)