Flexible Polymer Planar Optical Waveguides

We report about design, fabrication and properties of flexible polymer optical planar waveguides made of Epoxy Novolak Resin as planar waveguides deposited on various foil substrates. The design of the presented planar waveguides was realized on the bases of modified dispersion equation and was schemed for 633 nm, 850 nm, 1310 nm and 1550 nm wavelength. Propagation optical loss measurements were done by the fibre probe technique at wavelegnth 633 nm (He-Ne laser) and samples have optical losses lower than 2 dB/cm. Unlike the up-to-now presented structures our constructin is fully flexible what makes it possible to be used in innovative photonics structures

Properties of Siloxane Based Optical Waveguides Deposited on Transparent Paper and Foil

In this paper, we present the properties of flexible planar optical waveguides made of siloxane-based polymer deposited on Xerox transparent paper and PLEXIGLAS foil substrate. Measurement of optical properties such as the waveguiding properties and refractive index is carried out by the prism coupling technique for five wavelengths (473, 632.8, 964, 1311 and 1552 nm) and propagation optical loss were measured by the fibre probe technique at a wavelength of 632.8 nm (He-Ne laser). The measurement proved waveguiding properties for all measured wavelengths and the losses generally did not exceed 0.40 dB/cm; the best samples had optical losses around 0.24 dB/cm