The packaging of large spot-size optoelectronic devices

Lasers have been passively aligned to cleaved singlemode optical fibres on a silicon bench with coupling efficiencies of over 50%. This is the highest known reported result. Using the relaxed tolerances obtained from large spotsize lasers a very simple high performance laser package has also be produced. The combination of semiconductor device developments, silicon micromachining and novel packaging techniques has realised complicated optoelectronic modules which will give the technical performance and economic requirements needed for future optical telecommunication networks