Index matching in multilayered organic waveguides

J Thompson; F Albalawi; N Wickremasinghe; G Salvan; D R T Zahn; H Schmitzer; H P Wagner

doi:10.1088/1361-648X/abb31b

Index matching in multilayered organic waveguides

J Phys Condens Matter. 2020 Sep 7;32(48). doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/abb31b.

Authors

J Thompson¹, F Albalawi¹, N Wickremasinghe¹, G Salvan², D R T Zahn², H Schmitzer³, H P Wagner¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, United States of America.
² Semiconductor Physics, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09107 Chemnitz, Germany.
³ Department of Physics, Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH 45207, United States of America.

PMID: 32897873
DOI: 10.1088/1361-648X/abb31b

Abstract

Index matching of guided modes in birefringent multilayered organic waveguides opens new prospects for the design of mode coupling and mode switching devices. We demonstrate index matching of guided modes in two multilayered structures, in (a) a PTCDA-Alq₃-PTCDA three-layer and (b) a PTCDA-Alq₃effective medium multilayer waveguide. The optical waveguides were grown on a Pyrex substrate by organic molecular beam deposition. The occurrence of index matching was investigated both experimentally by measuring the effective refractive index dispersion of transverse electric and magnetic modes using them-line technique and theoretically by modelling the index dispersion with a transfer matrix algorithm.

Keywords: effective medium; index matching; multilayers; organic waveguides.