Flexible multimode optical elastomer waveguides

Abstract

The paper reports on properties of the new optical elastomer used for the realization of the multimode channel waveguides. The waveguides were fabricated by the doctor blade technique using the nickel mould with the dimension of the core 50 × 50 µm2. We measured refractive indices and waveguiding properties of the applied materials by dark mode spectros-copy and the waveguide propagation losses of the channel waveguides were measured using the cut-back method at the wavelengths from visible to infrared region. The optical losses in the infrared spectrum were lower than 0.60 dB/cm and in visible spectrum 0.76 dB/cm at 650 nm.