• Bosman, E.
• Van Erps, Jurgen
• Thienpont, Hugo
• Hendrickx, N.
• Daele, P. Van
• Steenberge, G. Van

Abstract

Excimer laser ablation is presented as an alternative technology to photolithography for the fabrication of board-level parallel optical interconnect waveguides. Arrays of polymer multimode waveguides with a 50 x 50 mu m(2) cross section on a 125-mu m pitch are fully characterized. Root mean square sidewall roughness is 35 nm; no deposition of debris is observed on scanning electron microscope images. The first conclusion out of loss spectrum measurements is a "yellowing effect" of laser ablated waveguides' leading to an increased loss at shorter wavelengths. The second important conclusion is a potential low loss at a wavelength of 850, 980, and 1310 nm. This is verified at 850 nm by cutback measurements on 10-cm-long waveguides showing an average propagation loss of 0.13 dB/cm.

Topics

• Deposition
• impedance spectroscopy
• polymer
• laser ablation