Design, Fabrication, Modeling, and Optical Characterization of Organic Polymer Nonlinear Directional Couplers

This research was an investigation into the suitability of a recently developed polymer, polyphenylene, as a material for integrated optical circuits (IOCs). Polymers show great promise in the area of IOCs because of material processing advantages, compatibility with most existing integrated circuit technology, and relatively strong nonlinear optical characteristics. This thesis contains an overview of: dielectric waveguides, linear and nonlinear directional coupler theory; various models useful in the design and analysis of optical waveguides; the fabrication of three different waveguide designs; the experimental apparatus and procedure used to optically characterize the waveguides; and the experimental results of the characterization. Waveguiding of near infrared light through polyphenylene, in both a slab waveguide and strip-loaded guides, was observed for the first time in this polymer. Coupling of light between guides of a multi-channel directional coupler was also observed. No definitive conclusions concerning nonlinear effects are possible due to the non-identical, multi-channel nature of the fabricated waveguides. The results of this research indicate that polyphenylene is a candidate for use in IOCs and that the polymer should be the topic of further research