Rapid techniques for the characterization of polymer materials for optical waveguides

Techniques for the rapid evaluation of material properties of interest in the design of polymer integrated optical devices that have recently been developed in our laboratory are described. These include methods for determining optical loss and electrical resistivity. The use of the techniques is demonstrated with polyimide materials as an example. The level of precision that is reasonably attained from each technique is discussed, along with the relative merits of these techniques compared to other potential approaches to obtaining similar information.