Preparation and characterization of semiconducting PPV-based polymer optical waveguide

• Main Author: Ponseca, Carlito S., Jr.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2004
• Subjects: Optical wave guides; Integrated optics; Polymers
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/3163
• Institution: De La Salle University

Optical waveguide is one of the most important components of Telecommunication systems. It serves as a valuable medium for different light sources and has proved to be reliable. The low-loss and stable performance of theses devises has now been exploited as a potential substitute to board-level interconnects of complex, highly dense electronic systems. The study focused on the preparation and characterization of an optical waveguide that is based on a semiconducting Poly(p- phenylene vinylene) or PPV polymer. The polymer was deposited on a layer of thin films: grooved glass slide (SiO2) as base and magnesium fluoride (MgF2) as substrate. Onto this, the polymer was spin-coated at a specified speed. That characterization involved the use of Uv-vis double beam spectrophotometer of wavelengths from 200nm to 900nm and a diode laser of wavelengths 1310 nm and 1550nm. By varying the deposition conditions, a PPV polymer film was grown. Its SEM (scanning electron microscope) images revealed the build-up of the film and found to be relatively uniform. The transmittance spectra shows that as high as 98.6 percent of light fed can be transmitted and it decreases as the volume of the polymer solution deposited is increased while the absorbance spectra agree with that of the literature. The highest attenuation of the waveguide was measured to be 0.675 dB while the highest efficiency is 90.4 percent. The use of different modulation frequencies and/or the increase on the volume of polymer solution deposited has very minimal effect on the attenuation and efficiency of the waveguide on 1310 nm and 1550 nm wavelengths.