Polymeric 16×16 arrayed-waveguide grating router using fluorinated polyethers operating around 1550 nm

A 16/spl times/16 arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) router with a channel spacing of 0.8 nm (100 GHz) operating around the 1550-nm wavelength has been fabricated using newly synthesized fluorinated polyethers. It has a good processibility and a high thermal stability up to 510/spl deg/C. The propagation loss of the buried-channel waveguide is about 0.4 dB/cm at the 1550-nm wavelength. The on-chip insertion loss ranges from 5.5 to 11 dB and the crosstalk is less than -27 dB. The AWG router shows good cyclic rotation property of the wavelength channels with an error smaller than 0.03 nm.