PCB-compatible optical interconnection using 45/spl deg/-ended connection rods and via-holed waveguides

In this paper, a new architecture for a chip-to-chip optical interconnection system is demonstrated that can be applied in a waveguide-embedded optical printed circuit board (PCB). The experiment used 45/spl deg/-ended optical connection rods as a medium to guide light paths perpendicularly between vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), or photodiodes (PDs) and a waveguide. A polymer film of multimode waveguides with cores of 100/spl times/65 /spl mu/m was sandwiched between conventional PCBs. Via holes were made with a diameter of about 140 /spl mu/m by CO/sub 2/-laser drilling through the PCB and the waveguide. Optical connection rods were made of a multimode silica fiber ribbon segment with a core diameter of 62.5 and 100 /spl mu/m. One end of the fiber segment was cut 45/spl deg/ and the other end 90/spl deg/ by a mechanical polishing method. These fiber rods were inserted into the via holes formed in the PCB, adjusting the insertion depth to locate the 45/spl deg/ end of rods near the waveguide cores. From this interconnection system, a total coupling efficiency of about -8 dB was achieved between VCSELs and PDs through connection rods and a 2.5 Gb/s /spl times/ 12-ch data link demonstrated through waveguides with a channel pitch of 250 /spl mu/m in the optical PCB.

[1]  E. Griese.  A high-performance hybrid electrical-optical interconnection technology for high-speed electronic systems , 2001 .

[2]  Stefan Lehmacher,et al.  Polymer optical waveguides integrated in printed circuit boards , 2001, Proceedings 27th European Conference on Optical Communication (Cat. No.01TH8551).

[3]  Masatoshi Ishikawa,et al.  Optoelectronic parallel computing using optically interconnected pipelined processing arrays , 1999 .

[4]  H. Schroder,et al.  Polymer optical interconnects for PCB , 2001, First International IEEE Conference on Polymers and Adhesives in Microelectronics and Photonics. Incorporating POLY, PEP & Adhesives in Electronics. Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8592).

[5]  Y. Ando,et al.  SMT-compatible optical-I/O chip packaging for chip-level optical interconnects , 2001, 2001 Proceedings. 51st Electronic Components and Technology Conference (Cat. No.01CH37220).

[6]  Hyo-Hoon Park,et al.  Compact packaging of optical and electronic components for on-board optical interconnects , 2005 .

[7]  W. Scheel,et al.  Optical interconnects by hot embossing for module and PCB technology-the EOCB approach , 1999, 1999 Proceedings. 49th Electronic Components and Technology Conference (Cat. No.99CH36299).

[8]  Ray T. Chen,et al.  Fully embedded board-level guided-wave optoelectronic interconnects , 2000, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[9]  Hyo-Hoon Park,et al.  New architecture of optical interconnection using 45-deg.-ended connection rods in waveguide-embedded printed circuit boards , 2003, SPIE OPTO.