Nanoporous polymer films for optical planar waveguide

Nano-porous polymer material is recently developed and is of very important practical value in optical field. In this paper, nano-porous polymer films which can be used in optical planar waveguide were studied. The refractive index of this kind film can be controlled and adjusted precisely. Through changing the volume fraction of PS in the film, the relationship between the effective refractive index and the pore volume ratio in the film was found with the scanning electron microscope and ellipsometry. The effective refractive index decreases with the increase of the pore volume ratio. The propagation characteristics of the fields in a nano-porous polymer planar waveguide were simulated with the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method and the result of the experiment was confirmed with the FDTD method too.