ss (d. B. /c m. ) Core. Clad. (a). (b). Core. Clad. Fig. 1 Transmission loss of polymer rods of the core and cladding ..... optical fiber shown as a shaded circle. (d) ...
High-performance polymeric materials for waveguide applications Konstantin Glukh, John-Henry Lipian, Richard Mimna, Phillip S. Neal, R. Ravikiran, Larry F. Rhodes, Robert A. Shick*, and Xiao-Mei Zhao The BFGoodrich Company, Electronic Materials Division 9921 Brecksville Road, Brecksville OH, 44141 ABSTRACT The ever-increasing need for economical, reliable, and high-performance optical interconnects for telecommunication and data communication markets demands new innovative solutions. Polymer technology being developed at BFGoodrich is focused on satisfying this demand. It is based on proprietary polynorbornene polymers that exhibit excellent optical, thermal and mechanical properties essential for fabrication of reliable components for integrated optics. Typical polymer waveguide systems exhibit a tradeoff between thermal and optical performance. The uniqueness of the polynorbornene system is that these tradeoffs are minimized. The intrinsic properties of the polynorbornene system include low transmission loss (
