Efficiently poled electro-optic polymer modulators

A titanium dioxide (TiO2) / electro-optic (EO) polymer hybrid waveguide modulator was designed and fabricated. This modulator possessed a significant advantage for realizing high poling efficiency regardless of the EO polymer resistivity. The in-device EO coefficient was measured to be 100 pm/V, which was 32% higher than that of the thin polymer film. As a result, the phase modulator displayed a VπL figure of merit of 3.5 V∙cm at 1550 nm, which can be reduced further in a push-pull Mach-Zehnder interferometer structure. Temporal stability test of the modulator at 85°C indicated only 8% change of Vπ over 500 hours. The propagation loss in the waveguide was measured as ~3 dB/cm.