Publication: Waveguide fabrication based on polyacrylate-co-polysiloxane
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Date
2020-10-01
Authors
Rahman, Amir Muhammad Noh Amin Abdul
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Abstract
Siloxane and acrylate polymers are the most common materials used in optical waveguide. In this work, acrylate-siloxane copolymer is chosen as a waveguide material due to each monomer applicability of having high thermal stability, high transparency, and ease of processing, easily modified in term of refractive index for a different type of waveguide function as well as a low loss of data transfer. This research focuses on three series of acrylate-siloxane. The first series consists of clad material composed of methacloxylpropyl terminated polydimethylsiloxane (MCP). The second series consists copolymerize of MCP with crosslinker Trimethylolpropane Triacrylate (TPT). Meanwhile, the third series consists of co-polymerize MCP with dimethoxydiphenyl silane (DPS) and trimethoxysilyl propyl methacrylate (TPM). Mechanism of crosslinking involved condensation and chain-growth polymerization. Photolithography techniques were used for patterning of the waveguide. The crosslinked network was developed which are dependent on the type of crosslinker used. The optical properties, thermal, chemical properties and characterization of the material were determined. These materials are highly transparent with more than 90% transmittance. The optical loss was measured at 1.55μm in two types of geometry: planar and channel design. The result is in a range of 0.001 to 0.024 dB/cm for planar waveguide while in channel waveguide the value is in a range of 1.6732 to 4.1987 dB/cm. As summary, novelty of synthesize copolymerize acrylate-siloxane material in waveguide studies is to achieve a low optical loss less than 0.05 dB/cm. Where low optical loss give higher rate of data transfer.