Fixed Connection of Single-Mode Polymer Optical Waveguide with Single-Mode Optical Fiber

We demonstrate forming a waveguide module by adhering a core in a polymer waveguide and a single-mode fiber (SMF) to stabilize the connection at high temperature. We confirm that the connections are stably maintained at 86°C.

I. Introduction

In recent years, there is an urgent need to introduce optical interconnects even close to the semiconductor ASIC chips on board. For such on-board areas, silicon photonics technology is attracting particular attention. Legacy single-mode optical fibers(SMFs), on the other hand, are intended for use in off-chip data links. Therefore, a large number of fiber-to-chip couplings are required in the vicinity of a photonics integrated chip (PIC). However, significantly high coupling loss due to the mismatch in propagating mode fields between PIC and SMF has become a technical problem. Therefore, spot size converters (SSCs) using polymer optical waveguides have attracted attention recently [1].