Modeling the Diffusion Process for Developing Optical Waveguides for PC-Board Integration

Kuhler, Thomas; Griese, Elmar

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-34471-8_20

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…A promising approach is the embedding of optical components in thin glass sheets by diffusion (Ramaswamy and Srivastava, 1988), as it can be easily integrated in common printed circuit boards manufacturing processes (Demmer et al, 2005). Advances were made in the modeling of the diffusion process to support the manufacturing (Kühler and Griese, 2013;Zhang et al, 2014). Optical couplers are fundamental elements for constructing photonic integrated circuits such as power splitters, interferometers or optical transceivers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utilizing multimode interference effects in integrated graded-index optical waveguides for efficient power splitting

Roth

Kuhler

Griese

2018

COMPEL

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Purpose For the realization of optical waveguide components, needed for photonic integrated circuits, multimode-interference based (MMI-based) devices are an excellent component class for the realization of low loss optical splitters. A promising approach to the manufacturing of these components is their embedding in thin glass sheets by ion-exchange diffusion processes, which has not yet been extensively studied. This study aims to significantly enhance the modeling of the diffusion process to support manufacturing of graded-index, MMI-based optical splitters. Design/methodology/approach The methods of design and analysis of MMI-based components are based on a step-index refractive index profile. In this work, fundamental correlations between the properties of the manufacturing ion-exchange process and the characteristics of the graded-index, MMI-based components are established. The refractive index profile is calculated with a proprietary solver based on the finite element method. Any further investigation with respect to parameter influence is based on the beam propagation method, specifically a finite difference based, semi-vectorial, wide-angle beam propagation algorithm. The influence of the parameters of the self-imaging effect is investigated. On this basis, different approaches for efficient power splitting with graded-index, MMI-based waveguide components are evaluated. Findings Easy approximations – mostly linear – can be found to model the dependencies of the investigated parameters. The resulting graded-index splitters are characterized by their low excess and insertion loss. Originality/value These findings are the first step in the direction of the semi-analytical modeling of the respective waveguide components to reduce the numerical effort.

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