ULTRA-LINEAR ELECTRO-OPTIC DIRECTIONAL COUPLER BASED ON HYBRID SOL-GEL/EO POLYIMIDE WAVEGUIDES

The phase 2 program will be focused on (1) Optimization of the design of the ultra-linear directional coupler, (2) fabrication of hybrid ultralinear directional coupler modulator chip, (3) demonstration of the increase of the elctro-optic coefficient to more than 300 pm/V and reduction of the drive voltage to less than 1 V, (3) achieve an effective optical loss of less than 1.5 dB/cm in the active region of the device and devise strategies to reduce the total insertion loss to 5 dB, (4) design of RF electrodes and termination, (5) fabrication of packaged ultra-linear hybrid sol-gel/EO polymer directional coupler modulators, (6)Performance testing including drive voltage, insertion loss, contrast, bandwidth, linearity, optical power handling, and drift; for example, demonstrate a 2x decrease in the dc drift over state-of-the-art LiNbO3 optical modulators and switches (7) reliability testing including temperature and humidity cycling, thermal shock, high temperature and low temperature storage, and photochemical stability.