Polymer thermo-optic-waveguide taps have a potential application as light r
outers for guided-wave optical interconnects involving cascaded fanouts. Th
e taps can guide light from an optical bus bar and direct it into other dev
ices in a switching/modulation network. Thermo-optic waveguide taps are des
igned and fabricated on silicon wafers using standard very large-scale inte
grated fabrication techniques. Coupling of light into an adjacent waveguide
tap is observed to increase by 12.3% from 38.7% to 51.0% with the applicat
ion of 34 mW of power. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(
99)03728-6].