An epoxy-based precursor polymer was prepared from the diglycidyl ether of Bisphenol A and aniline.The precursor polymer was doped with a certain amount of cross-linking agent M20S to obtain a thermal-curable polymeric system BPAN+M20S.The thermal curing behavior of BPAN+M20S was studied by means of in-situ infrared spectroscopy and it was found that BPAN+M20S showed significant thermal-curability and had the similar curing dynamics at both 120℃ and 180℃.The curing degree can reach 70 7% at 120℃ and 81 8% at 180℃ within 20 min,respectively.When a two-layer film was prepared with the cured polymer BPAN+M20S as the bottom cladding and an E.O.polymer BPAN-1A-NT as the upper layer,SEM studies showed a perfect interface between the bottom and the upper layers of the two-layer film and the surface of the upper layer was quite smooth.A polymeric planar prototype waveguide,which was fabricated based on the above two-layer film and covered by another layer of UV photoresist,showed good wave-guide performance.
