Silica-based spliers, couplers, and arrayed waveguide gratings are key components in optical communication. However, the high tuning power consumption of silica chips limits their development and application in elds such as Recongurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers and Mode Division Multiplexing. In this work, we demonstrate a silica thermo-optic switch based on polymer cladding within a Mach–Zehnder Interferometer framework, in which a UV-curable polymer is employed as the upper cladding to enhance thermal eciency. The device exhibits a power consumption of 48 mW, rise and fall response times were 215 μs and 271 μs, compared to all-silicon switches, the power consumption is reduced by 75%, and the switching speed is improved by nearly a factor of two, while maintaining a comparable insertion loss. Experimental results demonstrate an insertion loss of 8.53 dB and an extinction ratio of 10.12 dB.
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