Investigation Of Electro-Optic Polymer Modulator Based On Attenuated-Total-Reflection Configuration

In the Attenuated-Total-Reflection (ATR) multi-layer structure, light reflectivity can be highly dependent on layer parameters such as the layer thickness and refractive index. A tiny change in these parameters can lead to a large change in the light reflectivity. This characteristic enables the realization of many novel optoelectronic devices based on this configuration.In this dissertation, a new type of electro-optic polymer modulator base on ATR is introduced. This modulator works with the guided-wave reflectance peak, in which the light intensity is changed by the variation of the refractive index of poled polymer due to the electro-optic effects. Device performances have been theoretically and experimentally investigated. We also successfully carried out experiments of video signal transmission using the proposed modulator. It is shown that this new type of modulator needs simpler fabrication techniques and has lower insertion loss than that of the existing modulators.