Integrated flexible chalcogenide glass photonic devices

Photonic integration on thin flexible plastic substrates is important for emerging applications ranging from the realization of flexible interconnects to conformal sensors applied to the skin. Such devices are traditionally fabricated using pattern transfer, which is complicated and has limited integration capacity. Here, we report a convenient monolithic approach to realize flexible, integrated high-index-contrast chalcogenide glass photonic devices. By developing local neutral axis designs and suitable fabrication techniques, we realize a suite of photonic devices including waveguides, microdisk resonators, add–drop filters and photonic crystals that have excellent optical performance and mechanical flexibility, enabling repeated bending down to sub-millimetre radii without measurable performance degradation. The approach offers a facile fabrication route for three-dimensional high-index-contrast photonics that are difficult to create using traditional methods.