02-211A - Optical Materials: Water-Soluble Polyimides

"Polyimides are an attractive candidate as photonics materials because of their high glass transition temperature and high decomposition temperatures. In the semiconductor industry, polyimides are used extensively as molds and protective overcoats inintegrated circuits. Therefore, Shayda Technologies, Inc. proposes to develop water soluble polyimides for photonic applications, specifically for optical integrated circuits. Currently, most of the commercially available polyimides need strong solventsto dissolve them so they may be prepared into usable solutions. These solvents are not only harmful to the environment, but also pose a problem when layering these materials are needed for optical applications. The polymers proposed in this project couldoffer several advantages over the existing materials for optical applications. Besides being environmentally friendly, they may be conveniently used as cladding material to stack several waveguide layers for dense, three dimensional optical circuits, asare currently under development in our laboratory. Additionally, these materials may be used for encapsulating polymeric optical circuit modules. Because of their high glass-transition temperatures (~300C) polyimides are widely considered as the mostlikely candidate for functionalizing nonlinear optical chromophores to give the bulk material high thermal stability. At the same time, their well-known chemistry enables us to synthesize p