Fluorinated polyimide waveguide film fabricated by replication process and its application to optical interconnection

摘要

Replication processes of a fluorinated polyimide film were demonstrated using a polyimide and a quartz glass molds. A silicon-oxide was introduced on the top of the mold, which could significantly improve the separation between the mold and the fluorinated polyimide film without degrading the optical property. A single- and a multimode waveguide film were fabricated using a cladding film with grooves formed by our replication process. The multimode waveguide exhibited low optical propagation loss of 0.36dB/cm at the wavelength of 0.85um. Using the fluorinated polyimide waveguide film, a low cost optical board with vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and photodiode (PD) was developed for intra-board level optical interconnection. The edges of the multimode waveguide film were butt-coupled to a commercialized 0.85um multimode VCSEL and PD by the passive alignment technique developed. The waveguide film coupled with the VCSEL and the PD was mounted on a FR-4 printed wiring board (PWB), bending the waveguide film. The total loss of two couplings between the waveguide and optical components (VCSEL and PD) was obtained to be less than 3dB. We confirmed that the high-bit-rate data, >3Gbps, was transmitted using the optical board on the PWB.