Polymeric materials have interesting optical and mechanical properties, making them an attractive choice for future photonic systems. In addition to low optical losses and material dispersion, polymers are simple to manipulate and to cast using a wide variety of fabrication methods including soft-lithography techniques. The ability to dope polymeric materials with molecules that exhibit a large electro-optic coefficient, nonlinear response or optical gain, paves the way to all-polymer integrated optical circuits that include on-chip sources, processors and detectors. In our group, we use various techniques, mainly soft lithography, to pattern 3D active and passive polymeric photonic devices. The ability to fabricate high quality devices from various materials and integrate them on the same chip sets a good infrastructure for photonic integrated circuits and paves the way towards new applications in the future.
