Polymer waveguide with tunable optofluidic couplers for card-to-backplane optical interconnects

摘要

Polymeric waveguides with tunable optofluidic couplers are fabricated by the vacuum assisted microfluidic technique for card-to-backplane optical interconnect applications. The optofluidic coupler on a backplane consists of polymer waveguides and a perpendicular microfluidic channel with inclined sidewalls. An index matching liquid and air bubbles are located in the microfluidic hollow channel. The activation or deactivation of the surface normal coupling of the optofluidic coupler is accomplished by setting air bubbles or index matching liquid to be in contact with the waveguide mirrors. 10 Gbps eye diagrams of the card-to-backplane optical interconnect link have been demonstrated showing the high performance of the interconnect system.