A Novel Soft-lithography Based Coupling Structure For Optical Interconnection

Integrated Optics is a new branch of Opto-electronics, is connected with Optics Electronics and Solid Physics, is also a subject based on electromagnetism which transfers at optical membrane, and is related to microwave, laser, semiconductor physics and integrated circuit.Although the ability of information processing of electronic system based VLSIs in creasing steadily under the expediting of Moore's Law, the means of interconnecting these devices has remained relatively stationary, relying on conductive electrical lines. The performance of advanced electronic systems is increasingly limited by constraints imposed by interconnects and this limitation will inevitably become more serious as the operating frequency increases and the feature size reduces. The speed of communication between two chips is far lower than that in chip, and the growing requirement of the number of the chip I/O pads is difficult to fulfill since the chip perimeter must accommodate al of the I/O pads. The electronic interconnection has a few disadvantages to limit the performance of electronic system to improve, such as bandwidth limitation, system clock skew, inter-wires signal crosstalk, high power consumption and sensitivity to electromagnetic field etc. In order to overcome these drawbacks, the optical interconnection has being investigated since 1980s.The optical interconnection will replace the electronic interconnection because its high speed, high density, wide bandwidth, and un-interrupt. Optical backplane technology has been more and more important in parallel processor system, large scale optical interconnection and switch system. On the other hand, as the key optical electronic device in the field of optical interconnection and telecommunication, VCSEL optical transceiver module has been developed fleetly. The thesis will concentrate on research of optical backplane technology and VCSEL transceiver module.A low-cost, versatile optical coupling structure featuring a monolithic integration of a polymeric waveguide, beam ducts, and end-reflectors has been designed, prototyped, and demonstrated to be capable of sustaining high misalignment errors whilst maintaining usability in coupling efficiency. The soft lithography fabrication process of thisinterconnection design allows for significant advantages over traditional designs in terms of misalignment tolerance, manufacture cost and speed, as well as 3-D integration capability.