Laser writing correction of polymer waveguide fanouts

Conventional optical waveguide fabrication by lithographic techniques can result in waveguide devices that cannot be repaired or corrected after the fabrication process. Especially when encountering error due to imperfect fabrication, a time consuming costly error correction re-fabrication would be required. We report on the non-lithographic laser writing fabrication of polymer waveguide on a newly developed 4′-hydroxy-4-nitroazobenzene dye functionalized polymer film that can avoid the error correction re-fabrication. The laser writing correction of power splitting ratio on waveguide directional coupler and y-branch fanouts has been demonstrated.