Research On The Glass Waveguide Made By The Improved Ion-mask Technology

With the development of the society,people put forward higher requirements for information transmission and processing speed.The traditional electrical interconnection is unable to adapt to the rapid development of the information society because of its inherent physical bottleneck.With the features of anti electromagnetic interference,high bandwidth and high interconnect density,optical interconnection is recognized as the best way to solve the problem.The optical waveguide can realize the small radius bending,and is easy to realize the WDM technology,so the waveguide interconnect has become one of the main methods in Board level optical interconnection.The optical waveguide in glass substrate has a small loss,good environmental stability,convenience in integration,and low cost.It is therefore very suitable for the production of optical transmission layer in board level optical interconnects.The field-assisted ion exchange lacks the thermal uniformity,is not suitable for the production of optical waveguide in board level optical interconnects,so there is generally method using Ag+-Na+ ion exchange.However the surface optical waveguide fabricated by this method lose the advantage in the production of board level optical interconnection because of its refractive index distribution,surface scattering and the "silver line".The experiment is divided into three steps:Firstly,producing K+ ion mask layer through the K+-Na+ ion exchange;Secondly,making optical waveguides by Ag+-Na+ ion exchange;Thirdly,through the Na+-Ag+ anti ion exchange,making buried optical waveguide.After experimental optimization,the optical waveguide's transmission loss is 0.23dB/cm and coupling loss is 0.23dB.Compared with the conventional Ag+-Na+ ion exchange,the optical waveguide has a significant reduction in loss.And in comparison to the field assisted ion exchange,the insertion loss is similar,but the process and equipment of the production are greatly simplified,avoiding the phenomenon of uneven buried depth.Therefore,the improved K+ ion mask technology proposed in this paper works for the fabrication of optical interconnection layer in the board level optical interconnection.This paper is based on the physical mechanism of ion exchange,combined with the experimental parameters.The corresponding ion exchange theory model was established and verified for the improved K+ ion mask technology.This model provides a tool for the future optical waveguide fabrication.