Investigation on optical waveguide realisations based on polymers with large third order non-linear susceptibility
Résumé
Conjugated polymer materials have great potential to be suitable candidates for use in all-optical network communications. They possess ultra-fast response times and a large third order non-linearity compared to minerals (third order susceptibility Χ(3) of conjugated polymers can be 4 orders of magnitude larger than that of fused silica). Such large non-linearities would allow the fabrication of compact all-optical devices at low power levels. Here we present the first investigations into the creation of a conjugated polymer single mode optical waveguide based on Poly(3- AlkylThiophene) (P3AT). We first synthesized the P3AT and tried to control the chemical reaction conditions in order to improve polymer solubility in common organic solvents. In parallel, we studied the engineering of P3AT single mode waveguide structures made by photolithography techniques which requires the adjustment of P3AT thermo-mechanical properties. Recently, we have been able to fabricate and measure the parameters of Strip-Loaded and buried waveguides with usual polymers. We intend to adapt these processes to obtain the first P3AT single mode optical waveguide.