Design and fabrication of electro-optic waveguides with self-assembled superlattice films

This paper presents a strategy for fabricating low loss waveguide devices based on high electro-optic (EO) coefficient self-assembled superlattice (SAS) films, a new sort of polymeric films grown on SiO₂ film and coated with other polymeric films to form multi-layer EO waveguides structure without electric field poling. Firstly, the optical propagation loss induced by the absorption of electrodes is simulated and optimized to obtain both the low optical loss and the low drive voltage. Then this paper gives the scanned electron microscopic (SEM) images of the fabricated devices, the simulated and experimental images of the single guided mode, and the measured optical propagation loss of the EO waveguide devices of 1.0 dB/cm. Finally, the very great agreement between the simulated and measured results of propagation loss of devices is observed.