Polymer waveguide WDM channel selector operating over the entire C and L bands.

A tunable channel selector operating over both the C and L bands of wavelength-division-multiplexing optical network is proposed based on a thermo-optic tunable Bragg grating device in a polymer waveguide. A tilted Bragg grating cascaded with an asymmetric Y-branch waveguide effectively implements a small Bragg-reflection wavelength filter that does not require an external circulator. To increase the operating wavelength span of the channel selector, two Bragg gratings with different periods are fabricated on a single substrate for covering C and L bands, respectively. A wide tuning range over 80 nm along with a narrow bandwidth is demonstrated. Moreover, the polarization dependence of the reflection spectrum is observed to be less than 0.1 nm.

Long-Reach Transmission Characteristics of Tunable External Cavity Laser.

We report the transmission capability of a tunable external cavity laser (T-ECL) that utilizes a super-luminescent diode (SLD) and a polymer Bragg reflector (PBR) operating with a direct modulation of 2.5 Gb/s for a light source of a long-reach wavelength division multiplexed-passive optical net- work (WDM-PON). The T-ECL successfully operated at an ambient temperature of -20 °C to 70 °C when employing a cooled SLD. A tuning range of 12-nm is achieved with a tuning power of lower than 80 mW. A side mode suppression ratio of more than 35 dB was obtained for the whole tuning range. The linewidth of the lasing spectrum is less than 0.1 nm at 20 dB from the peak power. The transmission performance of the T-ECL, including an optical bandpass filter (OBPF), is better than that of the T-ECL excluding an OBPF for a long-reach transmission over 80 km of single mode fiber (SMF). The power penalty of the T-ECL is less than 1.4 dB when using an OBPF for an 80-km transmission.

Low-crosstalk high-density polymeric integrated optics incorporating self-assembled scattering monolayer.

Highly integrated optical components are strongly demanded because they enable wavelength-division multiplexing optical communication systems to achieve smaller footprints, lower power consumption, and enhanced reliability. Variable optical attenuator (VOA) arrays are often used with optical switches in cascaded form for reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer systems. Although VOAs and optical switches based on polymer waveguide technology are commercially available, it is still not viable to integrate these two array devices on a single chip because of significant interchannel crosstalk. In this work, we resolved the issue of crosstalk and integrated the arrays of optical switch and VOA on a single chip by incorporating a self-assembled scattering monolayer (SASM). The SASM was effective for scattering the planar guided mode; consequently, the crosstalk into an adjacent channel was significantly reduced, to less than -35 dB.

10-Gb/s direct modulation of polymer-based tunable external cavity lasers.

We demonstrate a directly-modulated 10-Gb/s tunable external cavity laser (ECL) fabricated by using a polymer Bragg reflector and a high-speed superluminescent diode (SLD). The tuning range and output power of this ECL are measured to be >11 nm and 2.6 mW (@ 100 mA), respectively. We directly modulate this laser at 10 Gb/s and transmit the modulated signal over 20 km of standard single-mode fiber. The power penalty is measured to be <2.8 dB at the bit-error rate (BER) of 10(-10).

Strain induced tunable wavelength filters based on flexible polymer waveguide Bragg reflector.

A tunable wavelength filter is demonstrated by imposing a strain on a polymeric Bragg reflection waveguide fabricated on a flexible substrate. The highly elastic property of flexible polymer device enables much wider tuning than the silica fiber. To produce a uniform grating pattern on a flexible plastic substrate, a post lift-off process along with an absorbing layer is incorporated. The flexible Bragg reflector shows narrow bandwidth, which is convincing the uniformity of the grating structure fabricated on plastic film. By stretching the flexible polymer device, the Bragg reflection wavelength is tuned continuously up to 45 nm for the maximum strain of 31,690 muepsilon, which is determined by the elastic expansion limit of waveguide polymer. From the linear wavelength shift proportional to the strain, the photoelastic coefficient of the ZPU polymer is found.