EVALUATION OF POLYMER-BASED 3RD-ORDER NONLINEAR INTEGRATED-OPTICS DEVICES

Nonlinear polymers are promising materials for high speed active integ rated optics devices. In this paper we evaluate the perspectives polym er based nonlinear optical devices can offer. special attention is dir ected to the materials aspects. In our experimental work we applied ma inly Akzo Nobel DANS side-chain polymer that exhibits large second and third order coefficients. This material has been characterized by thi rd harmonic generation, z-scan and pump-probe measurements. In additio n, various waveguiding structures have been used to measure the nonlin ear absorption (two photon absorption) on a ps time-scale. Finally an integrated optics Mach Zehnder interferometer has been realized and ev aluated. It is shown that the DANS side-chain polymer has many of the desired properties: the material is easily processable in high-quality optical waveguiding structures, has low linear absorption and its non linearity has a pure electronic origin. More materials research has to be done to arrive at materials with higher nonlinear coefficients to allow switching at moderate light intensity (<1 W peak power) and also with lower nonlinear absorption coefficients. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scien ce B.V.