Fabrication of a Graded-Index Circular-Core Polymer Parallel Optical Waveguide Using a Microdispenser for a High-Density Optical Printed Circuit Board

• Published in: IEEE journal of selected topics in quantum electronics Vol. 19; no. 2; p. 3600310
• Main Authors: Soma, K., Ishigure, T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.03.2013; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Circularity; Crosstalk; Graded-index (GI) core; Indexes; Mosquitoes; Needles; Noise levels; on-board interconnection; Optical device fabrication; Optical fibers; Optical polymers; optical printed circuit board (O-PCB); Optical waveguides; polymer optical waveguide; Polymers; Printed circuit boards; Printed circuits; Wave propagation; Waveguides
• ISSN: 1077-260X; 1558-4542
• DOI: 10.1109/JSTQE.2012.2227688

A simple fabrication method for multimode polymer optical waveguides with graded-index (GI) circular cores is introduced for use in optical printed circuit boards (O-PCBs). The new method, named "Mosquito method," utilizes a microdispenser to dispense a viscous monomer directly onto the substrates. By optimizing the dispensing conditions, 12-channel parallel waveguides with circular GI-cores (core diameter of 40 μm) are successfully fabricated using the Mosquito method. The advantages of GI-core waveguides for O-PCB applications are discussed by comparing the optical characteristics of the fabricated waveguides with those of conventional step-index (SI) square-core polymer waveguides, and even with those of silica-based GI multimode fibers (MMFs), as an ideal case. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparison of SI- and GI-core multimode polymer waveguides that are composed of the same polymer materials and that have similar core and pitch sizes. We experimentally demonstrate that the GI circular-core polymer waveguides fabricated by the Mosquito method have sufficiently low propagation loss (0.033 dB/cm at 850 nm), low connection loss with GI-MMFs, and low interchannel crosstalk. We observe approximately -50 dB of interchannel crosstalk in the 250-μm pitch GI-core waveguide fabricated, which is almost 10 dB lower than in the SI counterpart. Furthermore, sufficiently low crosstalk is maintained in a half-pitch GI-core waveguide fabricated by the Mosquito method.