A Tunable Optical Attenuator Based on Liquid Crystal Clad Polymer Optical Waveguide

Abstract

The invention discloses a variable optical attenuator based on liquid crystal cladding polymer optical waveguide. The variable optical attenuator comprises a silicon base, a bottom electrode, a silica lower cladding, a polymer optical waveguide core layer, a liquid crystal lower directional layer, a liquid crystal partition layer, a liquid crystal layer, a liquid crystal upper directional layer and a top electrode. Transmitting light can be transmitted with low loss in the polymer optical waveguide core layer under the condition of no impressed voltage; refractive index of the liquid crystal layer is gradually increased when the impressed voltage is gradually increased; and the transmitting light is gradually spread into the liquid crystal layer acting as the waveguide cladding layer and is not served as a guide film to transmit, so that loss is increased and functions of the variable optical attenuator can be realized. The variable optical attenuator based on the liquid crystal cladding layer polymer optical waveguide has the advantages that the variable optical attenuator has a compact structure and is convenient and easy to manufacture, do not have limits to long wavelength, and working bandwidth is large, and practical requirements in the photo-communication field, the integrated optics field and the like can be met.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention belongs to the field of optoelectronic devices, and in particular relates to an adjustable optical attenuator based on a liquid crystal cladding polymer optical waveguide. Background technique [0002] Variable Optical Attenuator (VOA) is an indispensable key device in optical communication system. The main function of the VOA is to reduce the optical signal or balance the optical power difference between channels. Especially with the application of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology and EDFA in optical communication systems, gain flattening or channel power equalization must be performed on multiple optical signal transmission channels, and dynamic saturation must be performed at the optical receiver. All of these make VOA an indispensable key device. VOA has become the core component of optical devices such as dynamic channel equalizer (DCE), variable power optical multiplexer (VMUX), and optical add-drop multipl...

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