Polymer-based passive photonic components with on-chip fiber grooves and thin film filters

Passive photonic components based on polymer planar waveguides combined with integrated thin film filters are demonstrated. Etched on-chip grooves provide the possibility of automatic and passive fiber attachment with high coupling efficiency. 1x2 multiplexers show extremely low insertion loss (< 1 dB) and low crosstalk level (< -30 dB). Integrated polarization splitters exhibit more than 35dB TE/TM extinction ratio over a 20nm wavelength window.