Packaging and long-term temperature-cycling evaluation of a nine-channel polymer AWG for O-band LAN-WDM

For O-band local-area-network wavelength-division multiplexing (LAN-WDM) applications, a nine-channel polymer arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) was designed, fabricated, packaged, and characterized. The device was designed for a center wavelength of 1310 nm and a channel spacing of 4.5 nm. Before thermal cycling, the packaged device exhibited excess losses below 5 dB, adjacent-channel crosstalk below −17 dB, and 1-dB bandwidths of 1.72–2.13 nm. All nine channels exhibited similar linear blue shifts over 25–75 °C, with an average thermal wavelength coefficient of −62.66 pm/°C. One packaged device underwent a temperature-cycling test between −40 and 110 °C for a total duration of 2088 h. Mean relative loss changes of all nine channels remained within ±1 dB at the room-temperature measurement checkpoints. However, post-cycling spectra revealed center-wavelength shifts and channel-dependent crosstalk degradation, indicating that comparatively stable peak transmission did not ensure preservation of the complete wavelength-selective response. These results provide experimental support for evaluating the packaging stability of polymer photonic devices and highlight the need to assess both loss variations and spectral changes.