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Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane

Flexible ultra-compact low-loss optical waveguides play a vital role in the development of soft photonics. The search for suitable materials and innovative fabrication techniques to achieve low loss long polymer optical waveguides and interconnects has proven to be challenging. In this paper, we dem...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Panusa, Giulia, Pu, Ye, Wang, Jieping, Moser, Christophe, Psaltis, Demetri
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7692651/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33114700
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym12112485
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author Panusa, Giulia
Pu, Ye
Wang, Jieping
Moser, Christophe
Psaltis, Demetri
author_facet Panusa, Giulia
Pu, Ye
Wang, Jieping
Moser, Christophe
Psaltis, Demetri
author_sort Panusa, Giulia
collection PubMed
description Flexible ultra-compact low-loss optical waveguides play a vital role in the development of soft photonics. The search for suitable materials and innovative fabrication techniques to achieve low loss long polymer optical waveguides and interconnects has proven to be challenging. In this paper, we demonstrate the fabrication of submicron optical waveguides in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using divinylbenzene (DVB) as the photopolymerizable monomer through two-photon polymerization (2PP). We show that the commercial oxime ester photoinitiator Irgacure OXE02 is suitable for triggering the DVB photopolymerization, resulting in a stable and controllable fabrication process for the fabrication of defect-free, 5-cm long waveguides. We further explore a multi-track fabrication strategy to enlarge the waveguide core size up to ~3 μm for better light confinement and reduced cross-talk. In these waveguides, we measured a refractive index contrast on the order of 0.005 and a transmission loss of 0.1 dB/cm at 710 nm wavelength.
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spelling pubmed-76926512020-11-28 Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane Panusa, Giulia Pu, Ye Wang, Jieping Moser, Christophe Psaltis, Demetri Polymers (Basel) Article Flexible ultra-compact low-loss optical waveguides play a vital role in the development of soft photonics. The search for suitable materials and innovative fabrication techniques to achieve low loss long polymer optical waveguides and interconnects has proven to be challenging. In this paper, we demonstrate the fabrication of submicron optical waveguides in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using divinylbenzene (DVB) as the photopolymerizable monomer through two-photon polymerization (2PP). We show that the commercial oxime ester photoinitiator Irgacure OXE02 is suitable for triggering the DVB photopolymerization, resulting in a stable and controllable fabrication process for the fabrication of defect-free, 5-cm long waveguides. We further explore a multi-track fabrication strategy to enlarge the waveguide core size up to ~3 μm for better light confinement and reduced cross-talk. In these waveguides, we measured a refractive index contrast on the order of 0.005 and a transmission loss of 0.1 dB/cm at 710 nm wavelength. MDPI 2020-10-26 /pmc/articles/PMC7692651/ /pubmed/33114700 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym12112485 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Panusa, Giulia
Pu, Ye
Wang, Jieping
Moser, Christophe
Psaltis, Demetri
Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane
title Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane
title_full Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane
title_fullStr Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane
title_full_unstemmed Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane
title_short Fabrication of Sub-Micron Polymer Waveguides through Two-Photon Polymerization in Polydimethylsiloxane
title_sort fabrication of sub-micron polymer waveguides through two-photon polymerization in polydimethylsiloxane
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7692651/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33114700
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym12112485
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