Fabrication of optical waveguides using organic photonic functional materials

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Organic photonic materials have potential to be applied for ultra-fast optical switches, spatial light modulators, and wavelength conversion devices. To attain these ends, organic optical waveguides with novel photonic functions that is hard to realize by using inorganic materials were fabricated. Optical functional ionic crystal, DAST, was successfully fabricated into rib waveguide by applying a new photo-process. This waveguide have a potential to be connected with passive polymer waveguides through photo and etching processes. A novel organic waveguide became possible to be realized by using these processes. DAST crystal was promising for generating THz wave effectively and to enhance the efficiency. Ridge waveguide of the crystal should have a cladding layer. So a special method for fabricating the cladding layer was investigated with the support of Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin. This new method allowed fabricating the cladding layer to the ridge waveguide. Using this technique, … More single-mode optical waveguides are possible to fabricate.We found that the DAST crystal has special crystal growth habits where is (100) direction grows faster than that of (-199) direction and that of (001) is faster than (00-1). By using these habits, we had fabricated a ridge waveguides toward the b-direction of the crystal on the polymer substrate where grooves with 50 x 50μm in size were patterned. This waveguide with ridge structure to b-direction is essential to utilize the highest d-coefficient, dィイD211ィエD2 or EO-coefficient, rィイD211ィエD2 of the crystal.Polystyrene was selected as a host polymer of the functional dyes and DAST was incorporated into the polymer homogeneously. This polymer system has a potential to be fabricated into a channel waveguide via thin film fabrication and dry etching process. New stylbazorium dyes were synthesized and several of these were revealed to have higher optical nonlinearity than that of the DAST.In conclusion, using the results obtained here, novel organic photonic waveguide could be realized that is necessary for future photonic information processing systems. Less