Rare Earth Doped Waveguide Materials and Devices

Description

The rare earth ion erbium (Er3+) doped waveguide amplifiers (EDWAs) based on glass materials have been demonstrated, exhibiting similar performances to erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), and can stand alone or be integrated with other components to offer a subsystem on a chip. Planar waveguide devices are attractive because the bandwidth is increased, the size is miniaturized and the overall cost of optical interface equipment is reduced.Polymers appear to be very suitable for integrated optical device applications. They can be deposited directly on any kind of substrates, and the low costs and simple processing steps are much more alluring than SiO2-based materials. The polymers used must have low losses and sufficient temperature and environmental stabilities, and active polymer waveguide devices based on thermal-optics or electro-optics effect have also been demonstrated.The investigators have demonstrated recently the world first polymeric EDWA. In this project further rare earth doped polymer materials and devices shall be investigated.