Hybrid electro-optic polymer/sol-gel waveguide modulator fabricated by all-wet etching process

A simple all-wet-etch process fabricates a hybrid electro-optic-polymer (EOP)/sol-gel waveguide modulator, confining the EOP laterally in the sol-gel overcladding. The structure enables an adiabatic transition between the passive sol-gel waveguides and the active EOP overlayers without lateral radiation. Intensity is confined well in a 0.9-mum-thick EOP overlayer, resulting in a low half-wave voltage (V-pi) due to the larger overlap integral. This lateral confinement technique allowed the reduction of V-pi (at 1550 nm) by a factor of 4. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.