Design of a Low Loss and Large-Tolerance Optical Interface for Large-Area Optical Waveguides
circuit board using a step-out fabrication technique is proposed. In this paper, we simulated and compared our proposed structure to a typical straight core structure in order to investigate the misalignment tolerances and coupling excess losses.
Direct laser-writing of polymer structures for optical interconnects on backplane printed circuit boards
We have previously developed a direct UV-laser-writing technique and custom photo-polymer optimised to form multimode polymer waveguides and embedded 45deg out-of-plane mirrors. In the IeMRC funded ldquoIntegrated Optical and Electronic Interconnect PCB Manufacturingrdquo (OPCB) project the key aim is to explore how these techniques can be extended to suit real-world optical backplane applications - both in the context of scale and manufacturability. In particular, we are assessing the viability of the technique for writing polymer optical waveguides of approximately 50 times 50 mum in cross-section over large metre-scale areas and the compatibility of this optical interconnect approach with existing PCB manufacturing processes.
Tolerance Analysis for Multilayer Optical Interconnections Integrated on a Printed Circuit Board
Polymer multilayer optical interconnections have gained interest over the past few years in view of their ability to increase the integration density, increase the routing flexibility, and make full use of the characteristics of 2D optoelectronic elements. The alignment between the functional elements in the different optical layers has to be sufficiently accurate in ensuring a high overall efficiency of the system. Numerical simulations have been used as a tool to determine whether laser ablation can be used as an alternative technology for the structuring of the functional elements of optical interconnections into a polymer optical layer. The experimentally achievable alignment accuracies are compared to tolerance ranges for an excess loss ¿ 1 dB obtained from the numerical study. The experimental achievements show that the alignment accuracies fall within the numerical tolerance ranges and have a good reproducibility. Experimental realizations of a two-layer multimode waveguide and inter- and out-of-plane- coupling structures are discussed and shown.