(초청강연논문) Design and Fabrication of Optical Printed Circuit Board using Microlenses and Micromirros

초록

This paper presents an overview of our study on the design, fabrication, and integration of various forms of microlenses and micromirros in the formation of optical printed circuit board (O-PCB). The O-PCBs are designed and fabricated to be of low cost, compact, high-speed, intelligent, light-weight, low-energy and environmentally friendly characteristics, in the form of either hard board or of flexible board, for generic and application-specific purpose. The O-PCBs carry 2-dimensional planar arrays of micro/nano-scale polymer optical waveguides and wires fabricated by means of thermal or UV imprinting technique. The O-PCBs are designed to integrate micro/nano-photonic devices such as AWGs, directional couplers, MMIs, modulators, micro-ring resonators, gratings, sensors, photonic crystal devices, plasmonic devices, and quantum devices, made of polymer, silicon, semiconductor, and bio-materials to perform the functions of sensing, storing, transporting, processing, switching, routing and distributing optical signals for power splitters, wavelength splitters, triplexers, and filters. The waveguides are fabricated by imprinting method with the core sizes of 50-100 microns and placed at a pitch of 250 microns. We then design and fabricate various micro-optical and nano-optical components to couple the light sources, detector arrays, and waveguide arrays. The optical coupling can be done either in intra-plane (or horizontal) interconnection along the board of integration or the inter-plane (or vertical) interconnection across the board, depending on the application or function of the O-PCBs under design. First, between the light sources and waveguides (or between the waveguides and detectors) we use 45° waveguide micro-mirrors. We design this mirror firstly by etching the silicon mold in such a way as to yield a 45 degree slanted end, which then is used as the stamp for the polymer waveguide imprinting with a 45 degree mirrors on each end. This provides low cost and