**1. Introduction**

288 Optical Communication

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The development of nanotechnology in photonics offers significant scientific and technological potentials for miniaturized photonic integrated circuits (PICs) [1,2]. It fosters the substantial efforts for exploring novel materials, developing easy fabrication techniques, reducing the size of photonic components, improving device integration density, and fabricating low-cost nanodevices. One-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials are promising candidates for photonics integration due to their intriguing optical, electronic, and mechanical properties [3-9]. In 2003, L. Tong et al. experimentally demonstrated low-loss optical waveguiding in silica micro/nanofibers (MNFs) with diameters far below the wavelength of the guided light [10], which renewed research interests in optical MNFs as potential building blocks for applications in high density and miniaturized PICs [11-22]. In particular, polymers have been widely regarded as useful materials for manipulating light in optical waveguide applications due to their good processability, biocompatibility, tunable properties, flexibility, and low cost for integration [15-22]. On the other hand, polymeric materials offer a unique opportunity to carry other chemical composition and to readily produce hybrid nanocomposites. 1D nanostructures fabricated from polymers have been the hot subject of recent research with regard to their special physical, chemical, electronic, and photonic properties [19,23-38]. Demonstration of viable polymer MNF based elements and architectures will require the development of reliable methods for the production of such structures with good control over critical parameters such as diameter, length, morphology, and chemical composition. Up to now, a bunch of new materials and new techniques have been developed to fabricate subwavelength and nanometer diameter polymer fibers, including electrospinning, phase separation, self assembling and one-step drawing, etc. [29].

© 2012 Xing et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2012 Xing et al., licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Polymer MNFs with diameter down to several nanometers and length up to hundreds of millimeters have been reported. Besides its low cost and tiny size, polymer MNFs are easy to couple with other general optical devices, enabling them to fulfill their potentials in optical functions. Due to their good flexibility and large tunability, many shapes and structures can be achieved from polymer MNFs, including optical splitters [18,30], resonator [31], couplers [32], Mach–Zehnder Interferometers (MZI) [33], light-emitting polymer nanofibers [34], photodetector [35], organic nanofiber laser [36], sensors [37,38], polymeric nanofiber architecture [38].

In this chapter, we will introduce the fabrication techniques of polymer MNFs. Then we will focus on polymer MNF-based elements and assess their potential used as passive and active components in miniaturized photonic devices. Final is a perspective.
