Polymer based electro-optic inline fiber modulator

Poled organic polymer films show great promise for use in integrated photon ic devices such as amplitude or phase modulators for telecommunication. We use these polymers in a novel, low loss electro-optic inline fiber modulato r. The modulator consists of a fiber half coupler, i.e. a curved fiber whic h is incorporated into a glass block and polished down close to the core. T he coupler is coated with a semitransparent gold electrode, a thin film of our highly electro-optic polymer and an upper silver electrode. The light i n the fiber can evanescently couple into the polymer overlay depending on t he effective refractive index matching between polymer and fiber core which can be modulated through the electro-optical effect. Preliminary results o f our first inline fiber modulators indicate a bandwidth of 100 MHz.