Silica–Polymer Heterogeneous Hybrid Integrated Mach–Zehnder Interferometer Optical Waveguide Temperature Sensor

In this paper, a temperature sensor based on a polymer–silica heterogeneous integrated Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure is proposed. The MZI structure consists of a polymer waveguide arm and a doped silica waveguide arm. Due to the opposite thermal optical coefficients of polymers and silica, the hybrid integrated MZI structure enhances the temperature sensing characteristics. The direct coupling method and side coupling method are introduced to reduce the coupling loss of the device. The simulation results show that the side coupling structure has lower coupling loss and greater manufacturing tolerance compared to the direct coupling structure. The side coupling loss for PMMA material-based devices, NOA material-based devices, and SU-8 material-based devices is 0.104 dB, 0.294 dB, and 0.618 dB, respectively. The sensitivity (S) values of the three hybrid devices are −6.85 nm/K, −6.48 nm/K, and −2.30 nm/K, which are an order of magnitude higher than those of an all-polymer waveguide temperature sensor. We calculated the temperature responsivity (RT) (FSR→∞) of the three devices as 13.16 × 10−5 K, 32.20 × 10−5 K, and 20.20 × 10−5 K, suggesting that high thermo-optic coefficient polymer materials and the hybrid integration method have a promising application in the field of on-chip temperature sensing.