Optical Coupling Structures for Integrated Polymer Photonics

Integrated polymer photonics is highly relevant to various fields in optical technologies ranging from optical communication to integrated sensor networks. One of the key components of such networks are low-loss coupling structures. We present first results on the fabrication of fully polymer based coupling structures in thin polymer foils which are optimized by means of optical simulations. Depending on the optical elements to be connected, we utilize various coupling concepts based on micro-mirrors, gratings and a novel type of coupling structures relying on self-written waveguides (SWW). The latter provide low-loss connections between two optical waveguides or between waveguides and laser diodes. For their fabrication, we used UV curable monomer between the two optical components to be connected. Launching UV light through the fiber or the waveguide leads to local polymerization of the monomer at the end facet, which also increases the refractive index locally and acts as a seed point for the SWW. In the talk we discuss the results of the optical characterization as well as different application scenarios for the fabricated optical couplers.