@inproceedings{SeyringerBurtscherGajdosova2019, author = {Dana Seyringer and Catalina Burtscher and Lenka Gajdosova}, title = {Optical splitters: design and applications}, series = {Interphotonics 2019. Book of abstracts. 2nd International Conference on Photonics Research. November 4-9 2019. Antalya, Turkey}, editor = {Ersin Kayahan and Ahmet Yavuz Oral and Mehmet Emre Ak{\"o}z and Onur Alp Aksan and Ibrahim Cinar}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Optical splitters are passive optical components, which have found applications in a wide range of telecom, sensing, medical and many other scientific areas. Low-index contrast optical splitters (Silica-on-Silicon (SoS) based waveguide devices) feature many advantages such as low fiber coupling losses and low propagation losses. They are considered an attractive DWDM solution in the telecommunication for all optical signal processing in optical communication systems. Nowadays the steadily increasing data volume in communication networks is driven by a rapid proliferation of home-based and business computers, storage capacities, processing capabilities and the extensive availability of Internet. The challenge is to transfer high data volumes in short periods of time over high distances as lossless as possible. The task of the optical splitters in Fiber-to-the-x (FTTx) network is to split one optical signal in many identical signals bringing for example the same TV signal in different households. Of course, the more buildings can be served by one optical splitter the lower are the installation costs. High-index contrast optical splitters (such as silicon, silicon nitride or polymer based waveguide devices) feature much smaller waveguide size compared to low index contrast splitters. Such compact devices can easily be implemented on-chip and have already been used in the development of optical sensors, devices for DNA diagnostics and for infrared spectroscopy. We will present the latest achievements in the design of two mostly used optical splitters (MMI and Y-branch) and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, some applications of the splitters developed in the frame of various projects will be presented. This work was carried out in the framework of the project PHOCOP (no. SK-AT-2017-0013) and NAMOPRISIN (no. SK-AT-2017-0005) from the Slovak research and development agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic and SK 16/2018 and 15/2018 from OeAD-GmbH.}, language = {en} }