Vertical Coupling of Polymeric Double-Layered Waveguides Using a Stepped MMI Coupler

Abstract

We designed a multimode interference (MMI) coupler to use in vertical coupling of double layered polymeric waveguides and analyzed the coupling characteristics by comparing our experimental and simulation results. We found that our proposed new structure, a stepped MMI coupler, is effective in vertical coupling between waveguide layers with a short length of MMI and has a high tolerance for the variation in the structure of an MMI coupler that can be induced as errors in the fabrication process.