A Multi-Fuctional Optical Switch: A WDM, Add/Drop Multiple

The rising demand for the Internet ls driving the telecommunication! industry to an all-optical network architecture. To meet the requirements of this strategy further development and improvement of the components are necessary. Currently the commercially available photonic devices, including Wavelength Division Multiplexers (WDM's) - widely regarded as a crucial building block of the anticipated all optical telecommunications network - are based on inorganic materials. Polymeric materials for optical applications have recently reached a performance maturity to compete with these inorganic optical materials. The stability and nonlinearity of these polymers are high enough to be considered for commercial applications in optoelectronics. The physical and chemical flexibility of modern polymeric materials make them strongly advantageous over other materials for these types of applications. They provide a large inventory of photonic materials that have low dielectric constant and can be chemically modified to suite specific applications. Hence, we propose to construct a novel device that can perform several critical tasks for telecommunication industry and can be manufactured with a fraction of the cost of the silicon based devices. The proposed tests and approaches of this Phase I project are chosen to sample a range of functionalities required of such optical devices and to touch on areas of future commercial interest. This way we hope to ensure development of one or more prototypes as proof of principle and as a point of entry into phase II.