Polymer waveguide incorporated with europium-aluminum polymer composite for compact and high-gain optical amplification devices

Abstract

We fabricate polymer waveguides incorporated with europium-aluminum (Eu-Al) polymer composite with a simple procedure named the Mosquito method utilizing a micro-dispenser. Under a coaxial excitation condition, an optical gain as high as 15.7 dB is observed at 616-nm wavelength for a 4.9-cm long waveguide. Furthermore, the fabricated waveguides with different lengths exhibit higher gains as their lengths increase, even under repeated high-power excitations.