Planar Waveguide from PPV Derivatives

F. Fitrilawati, M.O.Tjia, H.Eichner, C. Bubeck

Data & Software Engineering Research Group
STEI-ITB, Jl. Ganeca No.10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia

We report in this paper the result of thin film fabrication of MEH-PPV and MEH-PPB having good optical transparency and low surface roughness suitable for planar waveguide application. The linear optical properties of the polymers were characterized using reflectometry and prism coupling, while the non-linear optical property was measured by means of optical third harmonic generation (THG). The waveguide attenuation of the polymer films was determined by employing prism coupling set-up equipped with a photodiode array detector. The MEH-PPV waveguide film was shown to have a very low attenuation of 0.5 dB cm-¹ at 1064 nm yielding an unprecedentedly high figure of merits of 11 at 1 GW/cm².

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