Fabrication of optical waveguide using a non-contact printing technique

Non-contact printing methods have recently attracted attention in the field of optoelectronics manufacturing including solar cells, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, and transparent electrodes. Non-contact printing is a powerful and cost-effective technique for high-precision processing through the direct printing of optoelectronic devices. Multimode optical waveguides which are generally fabricated by lithography or reactive ion etching reported exhibiting minimum losses of 0.02 dB/cm and 0.2 dB/cm, respectively. Although these techniques are well established in the fabrication process, it is complicated and possible only with large-scale equipment. Non-contact printing technique can be used to solve these problems. In this paper, we design and demonstrate the printing of optical waveguides with a flexible substrate. The waveguide width was advanced through the nozzle design within 500 μm and applied to the high voltage and nozzle structure so that the capillary force does not damage the pattern.