New triazine containing polymers for use in integrated optics

Abstract

The amount of data transferred via the internet redoubles every eight month, this results in a strong increasing demand on bandwidth. Today glass fiber is the medium of choice for long range transmission, but for an optical network a lot of devices, such as multiplexer, splitter, attenuators etc. are needed. Typically such waveguide-based devices are produced by using silica, but in contrast to the inorganic waveguides polymers provide a lot of advantages, such as lower production costs, temperature insensitive devices and switches with low switching power. Developed in the late sixties as base materials for printed circuit boards polycyanurate ester resins are a relatively new class of polymers. They have a high thermostability and amazing mechanical properties. Our past work was focussed on highly fluorinated polycyanurate systems for use as waveguide materials in integrated optics. Low optical losses of less than 0.3 dB/cm @ 1550 nm were obtained and working optical prototypes were developed also. Our actual work is focused on related polymeric systems, which should remedy some disadvantages of the neat polycyanurates. Because of its outstanding thermomechanical properties and its excellent polishing ability, we extended the use of triazine-containing polymers as substrate materials for optical waveguiding devices. This paper is focused on the development of alternate triazine-containing polymeric substrates, the production of athermal integrated optical devices and the adjustment of the substrate-properties. For these specific devices polyacrylate systems are used as waveguiding materials.