Development of Electro-Optic Polymers and Its Applications to Silicon/Organic Hybrid Devices

Electro-Optic (EO) dyes and polymers for use in the O-band were designed and synthesized. By evaluating the hyperpolarizability β of various O-band EO dyes using the hyper-Rayleigh scattering method, several promising EO dyes were found. The side-chain EO polymer with a suitable O-band EO dye was synthesized. An excellent EO polymer with a relatively large EO coefficient r<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">33</inf> of 90 pm/V and a small absorption loss α of 2.1 dB/cm at 1310 nm in the O-band was found. Instead of the conventional figures of merit (FOMs) such as n<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>r<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">33</inf> and n<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>r<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">33</inf>/α, the redefined FOMs (n<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>r<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">33</inf>/λ and n<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>r<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">33</inf>/αλ) including the operation wavelength λ were introduced to find suitable EO polymers for use in the O-band. The half-wavelength voltage-length product V<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">π</inf>L of the Si/EO polymer hybrid Mach-Zehnder optical modulator fabricated using the EO polymer was 0.27 V·cm at 1308 nm, which is one of the most excellent V<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">π</inf>L values in the O-band optical modulation.