Channel waveguides in electro‐optic polymers using a photopolymer cladding technique

Reported here is a new fabrication technique for forming channel waveguides in organic electro‐optic (EO) polymer materials. The process uses projection printing to directly expose inverted ridge channel patterns in a UV curing optical epoxy cladding layer. This technique is noncontact, requires no post processing, minimizes wall roughness, and can be used with any spin coatable EO polymer. Single‐mode channel waveguides have been demonstrated and characterized as well as phase modulator devices.