Lithography-free Manufacturing of Polymer Photonic Devices

Photonic devices are used to produce, transmit, modulate, and detect light. These devices are widely used in the data storage and communications industries. Commercial photonic devices are typically made of rigid materials including inorganic oxides and semiconductors, however, these materials are costly, expensive to deposit and process, and have poor mechanical properties (e.g., brittle, delicate). Given these disadvantages, there is increasing interest in developing polymeric photonic devices that are more robust, flexible, easier to process and integrate into 2D and 3D circuits, and less expensive than devices made of inorganic materials. The most heavily used techniques for manufacturing polymeric photonic devices are conventional top-down photolithographic processes and dry ion etching. These processes are expensive and increase optical scattering losses due to roughening of the polymeric material during etching. Given the many benefits and widespread commercial and military uses of polymeric optical devices, there is a strong need for less expensive manufacturing methods capable of producing high quality photonic devices. The most promising non-photolithographic means for manufacturing high quality photonic devices with high throughput is using Soft Lithography. This program will focus on developing automated roll-based Soft Lithographic molding systems for high-throughput manufacturing polymeric photonic devices on flexible and rigid substrates.