Multimode planar polymer waveguides were fabricated on hybrid polymer nanoporous layers with a fast industrial aqueous-based method well adapted to coat large-surface plastic substrates and easily scalable up to economical mass production volumes. Using a fiber probe internal light source technique, we were able to measure quantitatively the modal propagation losses. In particular, attenuation coefficients lower than 0.5 dB/cm were found for the fundamental modes, thus showing the potential of our polymer nanoporous layers as optical isolation layers in waveguiding applications.
Tobias Kippenberg, Rui Ning Wang, Anat Siddharth, Mikhail Churaev, Nikolai Kuznetsov, Zihan Li, Junyin Zhang, Zelin Tan