Polymer optical interconnects: Meeting the requirements for datacom and telecom applications

An advanced versatile low-cost polymeric waveguide technology has been developed for optoelectronic applications. This technology is based upon new polymeric materials for ultra-low-loss optical interconnection, particularly for the key wavelengths of 0.83, 1.3, and 1.55 microns. Development of these materials has required a thorough understanding of fundamental principles of optical absorption due to both vibrational and electronic resonant absorptions. We have thus created materials with measured losses at 830 nm which are in the range of 0.02 dB/cm. At longer wavelengths, the losses can be higher due to the vibrational absorption within the polymer. However through careful selection of chemical structure, polymeric materials with intrinsic loss below 0.08 dB/cm have been demonstrated at 1.55 micron wavelength. These high-performance organic polymers can be readily made into both multimode and single-mode optical waveguide structures with controlled numerical aperture (NA) and geometry. We will discuss the use of these materials in a variety of passive photonic devices.