Flexible polymer waveguide tunable lasers

Opt Express. 2010 Apr 12;18(8):8392-9. doi: 10.1364/OE.18.008392.

Abstract

A flexible polymeric Bragg reflector is fabricated for the purpose of demonstrating widely tunable lasers with a compact simple structure. The external feedback of the Bragg reflected light into a superluminescent laser diode produces the lasing of a certain resonance wavelength. The highly elastic polymer device enables the direct tuning of the Bragg wavelength by controlling the imposed strain and provides a much wider tuning range than silica fiber Bragg gratings or thermo-optic tuned polymer devices. Both compressive and tensile strains are applied within the range from -36000 microepsilon to 35000 microepsilon, so as to accomplish the continuous tuning of the Bragg reflection wavelength over a range of up to 100 nm. The external feedback laser with the tunable Bragg reflector exhibits a repetitive wavelength tuning range of 80 nm with a side mode suppression ratio of 35 dB.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't