Polymer multimode waveguide bend based on a multilayered Eaton lens

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel polymer multimode waveguide bend based on a truncated Eaton lens, achieving low bend losses and compact footprint suitable for integrated optical components.

Contribution

It introduces a multilayered Eaton lens design for polymer waveguide bends, reducing size and loss compared to traditional approaches.

Findings

Achieved average bend losses of 0.69 and 0.87 dB for TM modes.

Maintained bend loss below 1 dB over 1520-1675 nm bandwidth.

Designed bend radius of 18.4 μm with effective performance.

Abstract

Reducing the bending radius of low-index contrast waveguides is essential in reducing the size of the integrated optical components. A polymeric multimode waveguide bend is presented based on the Eaton lens. The ray-tracing calculations are utilized to truncate the Eaton lens in order to improve the performance of the bend. The truncation of the lens decreases the footprint of the bend as well. The designed waveguide bend with a radius of 18.4 $\mu m$ is implemented by concentric cylindrical multilayer structure. The average bend losses of 0.69 and 0.87 dB are achieved for the $TM_0$ and $TM_1$ modes in the C-band of optical communication, respectively. The bend loss is lower than 1 dB in a bandwidth of 1520-1675 nm for both modes.