Athermal AWG with hybrid material structure waveguide

The temperature related the spectrum shift is a serious problem of arrayed waveguide grating (AWG). This paper present a method for reducing the temperature-related spectrum shifts in AWG device. The waveguide of a three-layer hybrid material structure is used in this method. In the hybrid structure, polymer which has a negative coefficient of refractive index related to temperature and silica material which has a positive refractive index coefficient of temperature are employed. The hybrid structure waveguide has a negative coefficient of efficient refractive index related to temperature, which can compensate the phase change due to the length change when temperature changes. Finite difference method is used to analyze three layer athermal waveguide structure, and the maximum temperature related spectrum shift of O.026nm for the designed AWG, which is about one thirtieth of the normal silica/silicon AWG structure, is achieved.