Fabrication and Characterization of Mach-Zehnder Interferometer on a single chip
Mach-Zehnder and Michelson Interferometers are heart of many optical communication devices and components. These interferometers also find to be the key idea behind optical coherence tomography. On the other hand, miniaturization of these devices requires suitable waveguide design and integration of electro-optic or magneto-optic components for optical modulation. The waveguide fabrication technology has already proven that the low loss waveguide structures are possible with silicon on insulator (SOI) or polymer material-based waveguide. Polymers such as SU-8, Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), etc are the most favorable contenders of micrometer and sub-nanometer fabrication of waveguides. In this article, we employed, PMMA as a waveguide material and fabricated micrometer sized Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The electro-optic components, light source and photo-diode are embedded to the device such that a single chip acts as an interferometer. The paper discuss the results of miniaturized lab-on-chip device suitable for clinical applications.
