| As humanity enters into a new millennium, we find ourselves able to achieve an age-old dream: instant personal communication with anyone, anywhere, at any time. Driving this communications revolution is literally networks of light pulses traversing the globe, mostly unseen but more powerful in impact than any army, government, or ideology. The development of such networks over the last thirty years have been due to key components in photonics and electronics: the laser, optical fibre, the microprocessor. Each of these components has been shrunk by orders of magnitude: feature sizes on transistors to sub-0.1 microns by 2002, 5 micron VCSELs by the same year, 20+ wavelength multiplexing capacity in single-mode fibre systems today. This miniaturization of components has lead to the orders of magnitude in performance increases such as Moore's Law, which states that microprocessor speed doubles every eighteen months. There is a similar law for the amount of available bandwidth, leading to an estimated 4,000-fold increase in capacity in a fibre cable since 1985. However, the miniaturization of optical components has lagged behind-there exists no low-cost integrated micro-optics in commercial systems use today. Reasons for this will be detailed in future chapters, but one is that past usage of optics has been in long-haul systems where optoelectronic conversion/amplification/modulation/switching systems do not have device size, power, or even cost (to some degree) constraints. However, as optoelectronic systems are integrated into the ‘last mile’ or ‘in the box’ these constraints are critical, and new technologies will have to be introduced.; This dissertation describes methodologies of fabrication of micro-optical systems in such a way that the integrated components are inexpensive, fast, and offer a high degree of integration with existing systems. The main area of focus is on making one- and two-photon optics in photopolymer, both diffractive and refractive. Research work includes material studies, methodologies of component fabrication, introduction of novel integrated components, preliminary concept demonstration, theoretical and experimental verification of analysis component performance, and guidelines for future research.; The study indicates that massively parallel arrays of optically written integrated optical components in optoelectronic systems are conceivable, and have the potential to migrate into commercial systems. However, key challenges remain: optimization of the photopolymer to prevent scattering and to maximize index change, and two-photon photopolymers sensitive to combinations of 1064 and 532 nanometres, respectively. |
