Laser fabrication of optical polymer waveguides and Bragg grating couplers

With the increasing interest in polymer integrated optical devices, techniques for fabrication of polymer waveguides and gratings are of critical importance [1-3]. We are developing direct laser fabrication techniques for this application. The investigation of the device fabrication is carried out using 20 ns, 193 nm ArF and 100 fs Ti:Sapphire lasers. Nearly single-mode straight waveguides and gratings with a sub-micron period were fabricated by laser ablation of polymer films.