4 / 2018-08-17 20:25:49

Application of the Mosquito Method to Polymer Components for Three-Dimensional Optical Wiring

polymer optical waveguides,three-dimensional optical wiring,the Mosquito method

In this paper, a fabrication method of three-dimensional polymer optical waveguides in which the cores are aligned in the vertical direction to a substrate, is investigated applying the Mosquito method. The Mosquito method is a unique method capable of fabricating graded-index (GI) circular core multimode waveguides. Therefore, a fabrication process of the vertical core is investigated by means of the Mosquito method. The cores vertically aligned to the substrate are possible to be applied to a vertical connection such as an optical VIA hole, and GI microlenses. As an application of the vertical core, furthermore, direct implementation on a VCSEL chip is investigated, in this paper.
The fabrication process of the Mosquito method that utilizes a micro dispenser includes three steps: 1) coating a liquid-state cladding monomer on a VCSEL chip, 2) scanning a needle of a syringe while dispensing a core monomer maintaining the needle-tip inserted into the cladding monomer and 3) UV curing both monomers. Vertical cores are formed by scanning the needle in the vertical direction.
First, the vertical cores are practically fabricated, and the core shape is evaluated. It is found that the core diameter and core shape can be controlled by adjusting the fabrication conditions. Then, we succeeded in forming a core directly on a VCSEL chip. The optical properties of the fabricated waveguide on the chip are measured. It is confirmed that the beam manipulation of the VCSEL is possible after the core formation to decrease the coupling loss to waveguides with VCSELs.