ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION Organic nonlinear optical (NLO) polymers are potential candidates for waveguide photonic devices such as Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulators, directional couplers, and Y-branch structures [1,2]. A variety of devices have been made in the past few years using NLO polymers [3-9]. Such devices have significant advantages over inorganic devices such as those made with LiNb03 or compound semiconductor devices in the areas of high speed and broad bandwidth. Such advantages are due to the polymer's low dielectric constant. Moreover, they are easily processed at low cost. Among the polymeric photonic devices, the MZ modulator has been under investigation and development for the past 10 years. The characteristics, performances, materials, etc. of recently developed MZ modulators are summarized in Table 1. The detailed characteristics, performances, including insertion losses, electrode lengths, and electro-optic coefficients (r33) are well described in the references.
