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The cost-effective and repeatable technology for integration of polymer multimode waveguide and out-of-plane 45° reflector mirrors is developed. This method is cost-effective, repeatable, robust, and fully compatible with the standard manufacturing processes for a 90° optical bending structure.
The basic concept of the technology for integration of waveguide and out-of-plane 45° reflector mirrors is as follows; 1) The positively patterned master in order to mold waveguides is manufactured by using photolithography and Deep RIE (Reactive Ion Etching). And the master is polished to obtain 45°-inclined plane. 2) Both sides of the positively patterned master are divided into three parts by using a sawing machine. One is a center master (main-master) with a positively patterned waveguide and the others are side masters (sub-master) without a pattered waveguide. The main master and sub-master turned over get back together again. 3) The negatively patterned PDMS master to be able to mold simultaneously both waveguide and out-of-plane 45° reflector mirrors is manufactured through pouring PDMS gel into master and thermally curing the PDMS master. 4) The multimode tapered waveguides with out-of-plane 45° reflector mirrors are simultaneously embossed by using PDMS master. The UV (Ultraviolet) curable material is organic-inorganic hybrid material (HYBRIMER, core index: 1.51, clad index: 1.48).
The transmitter module is constructed on a MOB. The MOB was employed for several purposes; to align optical module passively, to use as heat sinker and also to support the boards. On this MOB, 1×4 arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and Tapered Waveguide with 45° reflector mirrors are integrated. The height and width of waveguide's core are 100 μm, 60 μm respectively and the pitch is 250 μm. The transmission access lines in transmitter are designed considering differential impedance matching for high-speed operation. We measured the insertion loss of this transmitter module using a 62.5 μm graded index fiber. The average insertion loss value is roughly about 7dB.
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