Femtosecond laser fabrication of tubular waveguides in poly(methyl methacrylate)

Abstract

Femtosecond laser direct writing is employed for the fabrication of buried tubular waveguides in bulk poly(methyl methacrylate). A novel technique using selective chemical etching is presented to resolve the two-dimensional refractive-index profile of the fabrication structures. End-to-end coupling in the waveguides reveals a near-field intensity distribution that results from the superimposition of several propagating modes with different azimuthal symmetries. Mode analysis of the tubular waveguides is performed using the finite-difference method, and the possible propagating mode profiles are compared with the experimental data.

Ultrafast-laser-inscribed 3D integrated photonics: challenges and emerging applications

“…Type I modifications have only been observed in a handful of crystals, such as lithium fluoride [31], lithium niobate [32], strontium barium niobate [33], lithium tantalite [34], yttrium aluminium garnet [35], yttrium calcium oxoborate (YCOB) [36] and bismuth germanate crystals [37,38]. For completeness, it should be noted that ultrafast laser inscription also enables the fabrication of waveguides in polymers [39,40].…”

Direct Writing in Polymers with Femtosecond Laser Pulses: Physics and Applications

“…Various applications resulting from fs laser writing of different materials, especially in polymers, have been successfully demonstrated in the fields of micro-fluidics, bio-photonics, and photonics etc. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. The minimal damage arising from the generation of stress waves, thermal conduction, or melting has proved to be one of the main responsible mechanisms for various applications demonstrated using fs laser micromachining.…”

Liquid deposition photolithography for submicrometer resolution three-dimensional index structuring with large throughput

“…To increase throughput and eliminate depth restrictions, liquid polymers 9 containing photoinitiators with large two-photon cross-sections and polymerization chain reactions to increase sensitivity are used. Sparse waveguide 10,11 devices have been fabricated and scanning point exposures have created dense 3D structures including invisibility cloaks 12 and templates for a gold polarizer. 13 However, even with the increased throughput of polymers, the fabrication rate for the polymer structure of the invisibility cloak is 13 years mm 23 (see Supplementary Information), because the necessary power density still requires rastering through a large number of very small voxels, limiting devices to sparse, typically binary structures with small voxel count.…”