Flexible TE-Pass Polymer Waveguide Polarizer With Low Bending Loss

We demonstrate a flexible hybrid transverse electric (TE)-pass polymer waveguide polarizer utilizing the coupling between a lossy infinite-width surface plasmon polariton (LRSPP) waveguide and a dielectric waveguide. The transverse magnetic (TM) nature of the LRSPP waveguide allows for enabling effective attenuation of the TM modes and remarkable reduction of bending loss of the TE mode for a bent dielectric waveguide. Up to 20 times improvement of the bending loss characteristic is achieved compared with the stand-alone dielectric waveguide at a bending radius of 1 mm. Also, less than 19% deration of the extinction ratio is obtained at a bending radius of 1 mm to confirm the functionality of the waveguide polarizer at small bending radius. Such device promises the applications in which the bending directions are predetermined even with very small radii.

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