Multichannel Parallel Polymer Waveguide With Circular W-Shaped Index Profile Cores

We fabricate a parallel optical waveguide whose cores are composed of perdeuterated acrylate polymer. We experimentally demonstrate that this waveguide has lower loss by one order of magnitude compared to an acrylate-based waveguide at 850-nm wavelength. The eye diagram measured after a 12.5-Gb/s 15-m transmission shows that this waveguide has sufficiently high bandwidth. In addition, we verify a strong crosstalk reduction due to the specific (W-shaped) refractive index profile in the waveguide.