Properties of Siloxane Based Optical Waveguides Deposited on Transparent Paper and Foil

Abstract

In this paper, we present the properties of flexible planar optical waveguides made of siloxane-based polymer deposited on Xerox transparent paper and PLEXIGLAS foil substrate. Measurement of optical properties such as the waveguiding properties and refractive index is carried out by the prism coupling technique for five wavelengths (473, 632.8, 964, 1311 and 1552 nm) and propagation optical loss were measured by the fibre probe technique at a wavelength of 632.8 nm (He-Ne laser). The measurement proved waveguiding properties for all measured wavelengths and the losses generally did not exceed 0.40 dB/cm; the best samples had optical losses around 0.24 dB/cm.