Planar waveguide-based silica-polymer hybrid variable optical attenuator and its associated polymers

We have proposed a silica-polymer hybrid variable optical attenuator that we made by creating two trenches along the core of a straight silica planar waveguide and filling the trenches with a polymer. The polymer, which had a superhigh thermo-optic coefficient, was specially designed and developed in this study to lower the power consumption of the device. We achieved a maximum attenuation of -29 dB for the device by changing the polymer's temperature by only 7 degrees C. The device has a very low power consumption at 2-3 mW/channel, making it a good candidate for integration with arrayed waveguide gratings. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.