Perfluorinated acrylate polymer materials exhibit low absorption loss at 1310 and 1550 nm, but molecular oxygen inhibits their photocuring. We propose a novel, to our knowledge, UV photolithography method incorporating a pre-exposure process for fabricating low-loss perfluorinated acrylate polymer waveguides. During the pre-exposure process, a partially cured thin layer forms on the core layer, effectively overcoming oxygen inhibition in subsequent lithography. Furthermore, the functional group contents of the polymerized materials were characterized by a Raman spectrometer to analyze the development reaction under the pre-exposure layer. Utilizing this improved method, we fabricated a straight waveguide with a length of 21 cm. The experiments showed that the propagation losses are 0.14 dB/cm at 1310 nm and 0.51 dB/cm at 1550 nm. The inter-channel cross talk for a core pitch of 250 µm was measured as low as −49 dB at 1310 nm. Error-free NRZ data transmission over this waveguide at 25 Gb/s was achieved, showcasing the potential in optical interconnect and communication applications.

中文翻译：

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克服紫外光刻中的氧抑制以制造低损耗聚合物波导

全氟丙烯酸酯聚合物材料在1310和1550 nm处表现出低吸收损失，但分子氧抑制其光固化。据我们所知，我们提出了一种新颖的紫外光刻方法，该方法结合了预曝光工艺来制造低损耗全氟化丙烯酸酯聚合物波导。在预曝光过程中，核心层上形成部分固化的薄层，有效克服后续光刻中的氧抑制。此外，通过拉曼光谱仪表征聚合材料的官能团含量，以分析预曝光层下的显影反应。利用这种改进的方法，我们制造了长度为 21 厘米的直波导。实验表明，传播损耗在1310 nm处为0.14 dB/cm，在1550 nm处为0.51 dB/cm。 250 µm 芯间距的通道间串扰在 1310 nm 处测得低至 -49 dB。通过该波导实现了 25 Gb/s 的无差错 NRZ 数据传输，展示了光学互连和通信应用的潜力。