Ultraviolet imprinting and aligned ink-jetprinting for multilayer patterning of electro-optic polymer modulators

Optics Letters, Volume 38, Issue 10 ,Page 1597. 2013

Xiaohui Lin, Tao Ling, Harish Subbaraman, Xingyu Zhang, Kwangsub Byun, L. Jay Guo, and Ray T. Chen .

 

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 10100 Burnet Rd, Austin, Texas 78758, USA and

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA and

Omega Optics, Inc., 10306 Sausalito Dr, Austin, Texas 78759, USA.

Abstract

 

The present work demonstrates an electro-optic polymer-based Mach–Zehnder (MZ) modulator fabricated utilizing advanced ultraviolet (UV) imprinting and aligned ink-jet printing technologies for patterning and layer deposition. The bottom electrode layer is designed and directly ink-jet printed on the substrate to form the patterned layer. The waveguide structure is formed into a bottom cladding polymer using a transparent flexible mold-based UV imprinting method. All other layers can be ink-jet printed. The top electrode is aligned and printed over the MZ arm. The modulator demonstrates a V-pi of 8 V at 3 kHz. This technology shows great potential in minimizing the fabrication complexity and roll-to-roll compatibility for manufacturing low cost, lightweight, and conformal modulators at high throughput.

© 2013 Optical Society of America

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