Li Hongqiang, Wang Yingjie, Sun Yaqiang, Zhang Sai, An Zhixuan, Zhang Shanshan, Zhang Cheng, Zhang Zanyun, Mao Quanhua, Prades García Juan Daniel
Appl Opt. 2022 Mar 20;61(9):2213-2218. doi: 10.1364/AO.447132.
We investigated and fabricated 1×8 and 1×16 traditional/saddle arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) wavelength division multiplexing devices on flexible substrates. The core layer was made of the negative epoxy photoresist SU-8, and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material was selected for the cladding based on the high refractive index difference. A chemical modification method of PDMS was proposed to enhance the film-forming characteristics of the SU-8 core layer on PDMS substrates. After fabricating and characterizing the optical properties of the AWGs, the dimensions of the proposed 1×8 and 1×16 AWGs were 0.9×0.8 and 1.1×0.9, respectively. Experimental results showed that the saddle-type 1×8 and 1×16 AWGs had good signal transmission characteristics, and the insertion losses were only 5.1 dB and 6.8 dB, respectively, which were lower than those of traditional-type AWGs with the same dimensions and number of waveguides.
