title: Flexible polymer waveguide tunable lasers.
abstract: A flexible polymeric Bragg reflector is fabricated for the purpose of demonstrating widely tunable lasers with a compact simple structure. The external feedback of the Bragg reflected light into a superluminescent laser diode produces the lasing of a certain resonance wavelength. The highly elastic polymer device enables the direct tuning of the Bragg wavelength by controlling the imposed strain and provides a much wider tuning range than silica fiber Bragg gratings or thermo-optic tuned polymer devices. Both compressive and tensile strains are applied within the range from -36000 microepsilon to 35000 microepsilon, so as to accomplish the continuous tuning of the Bragg reflection wavelength over a range of up to 100 nm. The external feedback laser with the tunable Bragg reflector exhibits a repetitive wavelength tuning range of 80 nm with a side mode suppression ratio of 35 dB.
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical Engineering, Pusan National University, Pusan (Busan), 609-735, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Kyung-Jo
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jun-Whee
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Min-Cheol
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.forename: Young-Ouk
authors.initials: YO
authors.lastname: Noh
authors.forename: Hyung-Jong
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Lee