A tunable polymer waveguide ring filter fabricated with UV-based soft imprint technique

Photonic integrated components with tunability, low power consumption and low fabrication cost are of considerable interest for optical communications and optical signal processing systems. Based on the high thermo-optic coefficient of polymer material, we demonstrate a tunable integrated waveguide ring filter with a novel but very simple UV-based soft imprint technique. By properly incorporating a Mach–Zencher interferometer (MZI), the tunability of the ring filter's coupling states and resonant wavelength are realized flexibly by the micro-heaters. The tuning efficiency of resonant wavelength is 8.2 pm/mW within one free spectrum range of the ring filter.