Influence of Temperature and Humidity Change on Optical Waveguide Circuits Composed of Deuterated and Fluorinated Methacrylate Polymers

Abstract

We fabricated a 57 cm long waveguide circuit and an arrayed-waveguide-grating (AWG) demulti/multiplexer using deuterated and fluorinated methacrylate polymers, and examined the influence of environmental change on their transmission characteristics. A 57 cm waveguide with a loss of 0.1 dB/cm at 1.3 µ m exhibited a slight loss increase of 0.03 dB/cm when the humidity was raised from 13 to 98%RH and a negligible loss change when the temperature was increased to 70° C. On the other hand temperature and humidity changes respectively caused wavelength shifts of 0.9 and 5 nm in the transmission peaks of an AWG with an adjacent channel spacing of 0.65 nm. Furthermore we confirmed that the influence of the humidity resulted from water sorption in the waveguide polymers.