GRADED EFFECTIVE-INDEX PLANAR POLYMER WAVE-GUIDES

A dispensed polymer waveguide with a parabolic surface is shown to exh ibit graded index waveguide behavior for each of the discrete vertical modes of the polymer layer due to the lateral variation of the effect ive indexes of the modes, Air-clad waveguide losses are less than 0.7 dB/cm, Beam propagation simulations show excellent agreement with reco rded images of oscillating guided beams. These graded effective index waveguides may be useful in high-speed, large scale optical interconne ctions and coarse wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) integrated op tics applications.