Optical absorption in transparent PDMS materials applied for multimode waveguides fabrication

The optical properties of transparent PDMS polymer materials, which can be integrated into general printed circuit board (PCB) for data communication, are of great interest due to the substantial market expectations for the near future. For the present paper, it was found that the absorption loss in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is mainly caused by the vibrational overtone and combination bands of the CH3-groups of the polymer in the spectral datacom region of 600–900 nm. Based on observed positions of fundamental, overtone and combination bands of the methyl-group, as recorded within the mid- and near-infrared spectra, anharmonicity constants and normal vibration frequencies were determined. Thus, an empirical equation for estimating the wavelengths with the most significant intrinsic absorption loss due to the corresponding band positions was formulated, which was found to agree well with the experimental data. In addition, PDMS multimode waveguides were fabricated and the respective optical insertion loss was measured at 850 nm, which is commercially used for optical datacom transmission and finally the thermal stability of PDMS multimode waveguides was verified as well.