Ablation dynamics of periodic nanostructures for polymer-based all-optical devices

This paper reviews the recent experimental results in the dynamics of laser ablation in the high third-order susceptibility polymeric material poly-4BCMU. Periodic sub-micron structures were fabricated in polymeric thin films by superposition of two ultrashort duration UV plane waves. A study of the development of ablation process on femtosecond time-scale is presented. Applications of these periodic structures in integrated optics are discussed. In particular, nonlinear optical switching devices based on grating waveguides structures are suggested. The suitability of our materials for novel high speed photonic switching concepts based on Bragg grating structures is investigated. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.