ELECTROOPTIC POLYMER WAVE-GUIDE FABRICATED USING ELECTRIC-FIELD-ASSISTED CHEMICAL VAPOR-DEPOSITION

We describe the fabrication of an electro-optic (EO) polymer channel waveguide using a new technique, electric-field-assisted chemical vapor deposition. A polymer film is deposited from epoxy and nonlinear optical (NLO) aliphatic amine using chemical vapor deposition under an electric field applied by slit electrodes on a thermally oxidized Si wafer, at room temperature. A clear propagating He-Ne laser beam is observed along the electrode gap. The propagated beam's near field pattern is bright for the TE mode, but very weak for the TM mode. This indicates the NLO side groups' in-plane alignment and the fabrication of a channel waveguide. The EO coefficient of this waveguide, measured in a Mach - Zehnder interferometer, is r11 approximately 0.1 pm/V. The polymer channel waveguide, which is poled at room temperature after film deposition, shows no EO response. This means NLO molecules are actually aligned during polymerizing, not after.