Preparation Of Organic/Inorganic Composite Optical Waveguides

As we know,21st century is an information epoch with the features of high capacity,high broadband and high velocity,at which the integrated optics and optical communication develop at an unprecedented fast speed.So,the development of new optical materials with high performance and low cost for optical waveguides which are the basic devices of the integrated optics and optical communication,has become one of the research hotspots.The organic/inorganic material,a new type material for optical waveguide,possesses many features such as high flexibility,high effectiveness,integrity and economy.This paper aims at the preparation of PMMA and organic/inorganic SiO₂/ZrO₂ film using the sol-gel method and the fabrication of composite optical waveguide with PMMA and SiO₂/ZrO₂ film as the cladding and core layers respectively.PMMA cladding film has been successfully fabricated with smooth surface and the thickness of 17μm,whose refractive index is 1.49 and up to 1.54 via UV exposure and heat-treatment,which is low enough for the requirement of coat layer.Furthermore,the KH-570 which was added to PMMA could enable the refractive index of PMMA to reduce to 1.47, which is close to that of quartz(about 1.46).Three types of sols with different ingredient proportion have been prepared with sol-gel technology to select one with the best performance for further study.And organic/inorganic SiO₂/ZrO₂ gel film with good photosensitivity and thickness of 2.02μm has been obtained, which possesses high refractive index from 1.69 to 1.72,respecitively before and after UV exposure and heat-treatment,which is high enough to be used as the core layer of waveguide.At last,the optical composite waveguide has been successfully fabricated using the PMMA film with a thickness of 12.98μm as cladding layer and the SiO₂/ZrO₂ gel film with a thickness of 2.02μm as core layer respectively,and a strip waveguide structure has also been obtained.The optical waveguide theoretic analyses indicate that this structure can realize multi-mode light transmission.