650-nm Waveguide Thermo-optic Switch Based On All Organic-inorganic Materials

Thermo-optical switch is one of the key components in optical fibercommunication system. It plays a vital role in the optical information processing. Thenatural sciences, especially the information technology developed rapidly, therequirements of communication speed increased. Optical fiber communication systembecome the most important research. Thermo-optic switch has great potential becauseof its simple structure, faster response advantages. But today the stability of thethermo-optic switch and switching speed has increasingly become a bottleneck toenhance the communication system bandwidth. How to improve the practicality andspeed of response of the thermo-optical switching device is the key to solving thisproblem. The full hybrid material thermal switch has drawn the majority of attention,as it has the advantages such as material stability, response speed, thermo-opticcoefficient, low cost, simple process.The organic/inorganic hybrid materials is produced by a series of reactionsincluding adding organic chain to the skeleton of the inorganic materials, so that it hasthe advantages of the stability in inorganic materials and a high thermal coefficient inorganic materials. It has pointed an important research direction for the commercialpolymer thermo-optical switches.In this paper， we introduce the significance, type, main performance parameters, theadvantage and disadvantage of the polymer switch especially. Then we studied the thetheoretical basis of the polymer thermo-optic switch: including the principle ofthermo-optic effect and how MZ thermo-optic switch works. Next we will elaboratethe preparation and characterization of the bonding-type organic/inorganic compositematerials, as well as the manufacture and testing of the material for the650nm all-composite embedded type MZ thermo-optic switch.1A new type of thermo-optical material is made, characterizated and applicated.This is essential for our experiments.2The newly made material has been characterized by observing the atomic forcemicroscope photograph after the coating film, to study the film forming characteristics.By using the ellipsometer measurement we have measured the material with arefractive index of1.504and1.524at650nm wavelength.3The embedded Mach-Zehnder (MZ) type electro-optic switch were produced bytraditional semiconductor-based technology, with the use of the organic/inorganicmaterials. The insertion loss is10.5dB at650nm wavelength, the switching time isabout400μs.