Influence on the optical performance of droplets and enclosures in printed polymer optical waveguides

Printing polymer optical waveguides by means of combined printing processes has proven to be a challenging but effective way of producing waveguides with a loss less than 0.3dB/cm. In order to evaluate the optical performance of the produced waveguides, optical simulations have been carried out. In this work we show the influence on the optical performance by simulating droplets and enclosures in multimode waveguides with a proprietary raytracing algorithm. Critical waveguide parameters such as width and height variation will be evaluated. Finally, experimentally achieved optical performance is presented and compared with the simulation result.