Photolithographic properties of photosensitive sol-gel materials and their application to optical waveguides

Abstract

Novel photosensitive sol-gel materials, which are comprised of siloxane oligomers and a photo acid generator (PAG), have been developed. The spectroscopic studies led to the observation that sol-gel reaction was affected by a balance of between PAG and amine content added as catalysts. Additionally, the balance strongly influenced the line pattern profile formed with exposure, which indicated that the photolithographic properties changed from negative to positive tone with the amine content. An optical channel waveguide based on sol-gel materials was fabricated through photolithographic processing and showed low propagation losses that were 0.3 dB/cm and 0.6 dB/cm at 1.31 μm and 1.55 μm, respectively, in addition to excellent long-term reliability.