Polymers have been studied as an alternate material to silica for optical interconnects and photonic devices for the last decade. In this paper we review the work performed at GE Global Research in the area of polymer based material systems for photonic applications. A description of the application of the technology to several different areas is presented. Some of these application areas include optical interconnects, optoelectronic integration and electro-optical devices using polymer material systems. The overall effort includes areas of research from the basic chemistry of polymer optical materials to the development of photonic components. Specifically the use of polymer materials as a platform technology for hybrid integration in the development of multi-functional sub systems is reviewed.
The development of a photonic backplane for high-speed and high-bandwidth communications is presented. This hybrid, multimode, multi-channel backplane structure contains both electrical and optical interconnects, suitable for next-generation high-speed servers with terabit backplane capacity. Removable and all-passively aligned high density interconnects on this backplane are achieved by polymer based optical waveguides with integrated micro-optics and VCSEL arrays on conventional printed circuit boards. The fabrication of this photonic backplane requires few additional steps outside a traditional board-manufacturing environment and is largely compatible with existing processes.
A new method of interconnecting various optoelectronic components is discussed. Offset error up to 25 microns can be corrected to achieve single mode alignment accuracies. Several planar optical devices were photocomposed using the adaptive photolithographic method and these have been shown to perform with the desired characteristics.
Based on radiation mode coupling through a self-formed polymer waveguide extension, efficient single-mode optical coupling can be achieved between active and passive chips while relaxing the stringent positioning requirements. A 20dB improvement can be achieved according to simulation results. Single-mode waveguides have been successfully demonstrated using GE photo-definable polymer materials.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.