Photo-bleaching induced electro-optic polymer modulators with dual driving electrodes operating at 1.55 µm wavelength

Electro-optic (EO) polymeric Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulators with photo-bleaching (PB) induced waveguides and dual driving electrodes operating at 1.55 µm wavelength have been demonstrated. The half-wave voltage of the integrated polymeric modulator was 4.5 V in a push–pull configuration with a 1.5 cm interaction length. The extinction ratio was greater than 20 dB, and the fibre-to-fibre insertion loss was 8 dB for the TM polarisation. The achieved fibre-to-fibre insertion loss and driving voltage are the best, to the authors knowledge, in the reported PB induced MZ EO polymeric modulators.