Low power penalty, dry-film polymer waveguides for silicon photonics chip packaging

Two types of polymer waveguides made by dry film process are characterized for silicon photonics chip packaging. In this paper, both DC and high-speed performance of the waveguides are demonstrated. DC characterization includes coupling loss from/to a single-mode fiber (SMF), near field pattern (NFP), far field pattern (FFP), and alignment tolerance measurement. The designed values for the waveguide cores are 10 μm in height and 14 μm in width. In terms of obtaining small enough coupling loss with butt coupling between the waveguides and SMFs, two kinds of numerical aperture (NA), 0.13 and 0.35, are selected. On the other hand, high-speed transmission experiments were tested by eye patterns. Clear eye openings were observed up to 25 Gbps. The results show dry-film polymer waveguides are one of a promising solutions for silicon photonics chip packaging used in next generation optical multi-chip module (MCM).