Abstract
Polymer optical waveguide devices have attracted a lot of attention with regard to applications in the all-optical network, basically, because they have the potential of added optical functionality and because they may be producible at low cost. The combination of a large thermo-optic (TO) coefficient with low heat conductivity results in low electric switching power at ms-response time.1 Two kinds of polymer waveguide switches, i.e., interferometric-type switches and digital optical switches (DOS), have been reported. The first type shows low optical crosstalk at low switching power.1,2 However, the switching power and the ambient temperature have to be precisely controlled, and these devices are wavelength sensitive. On the other hand, there is no need for precise control of switching power and temperature for DOS type devices3,4 and they are wavelength insensitive, but rather bulky. Fig. 1 shows the mea-sured transfer characteristics of a 2 × 2 Y-DOS fabricated at HHI. Based on polymer 1 × 2 Y DOS, a 4 × 4 polymer TO DOS with a total loss of 3.3 dB and a crosstalk of 60 dB, 5 and a 16 × 16 digital optical switching matrix with a loss of 6 dB and a crosstalk of 30 dB6 were reported recently.
© 2002 Optical Society of America
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