Integrated Photonic Devices Incorporating Low-Loss Fluorinated Polymer Materials

Low-loss polymer materials incorporating fluorinated compounds have been utilized for the investigation of various functional optical devices useful for optical communication and optical sensor systems. Since reliability issues concerning the polymer device have been resolved, polymeric waveguide devices have been gradually adopted for commercial application systems. The two most successfully commercialized polymeric integrated optic devices, variable optical attenuators and digital optical switches, are reviewed in this paper. Utilizing unique properties of optical polymers which are not available in other optical materials, novel polymeric optical devices are proposed including widely tunable external cavity lasers and integrated optical current sensors.