Scaleable Board-Level High Performance Optical Polymer Waveguide Technologies

We present key technologies developed at Georgia Tech PRC for manufacture able and scaleable high performance waveguides on packages or on printed circuit boards (PCBs). The rough and irregular topographic surface is the first challenge when waveguides are implanted onto a high-density interconnects (HDI) board. Optical buffer layer technology is developed to modify the rough and irregular topography of PCB to a surface with less than 5 nanometer smoothness, which is required for making high quality waveguides, waveguide-based devices and micro optical components. Defects such as particle contaminations, mechanical scratches and damages, and debris etc. process related problem is a big challenge for manufacturability of volume production for the optoelectronics industry. As a solution, a novel cap-clad technology has been developed to make defect-free or defect-less waveguides and high definition optical devices. This technology allows us to make high quality waveguides at a low cost package or PCB environment. Fabrication of other optical components such as 45 degree micro-mirrors and micro-lenses is also discussed and demonstrated in this paper. In the end, the thermal mechanical and optical reliability issues are studied by experiments