High-density, end-to-end optoelectronic integration and packaging for digital-optical interconnect systems

Recent progress toward implementing high-density, optical-digital building blocks necessary to accomplish efficient, end-to-end optical interconnect architecture on low cost FR-4 boards has been demonstrated. The optical interconnect system consists of fabricating an optical buffer layer separating board metallurgy from the optical lightwave circuit layer, and implementing optical links between embedded lasers and detectors. We will show an example of 1310 nm light from an edge emitting distributed-feedback or Fabry-Perot laser operating at 10 Gb/s being guided to the photodetector by a polymer waveguide. Both lasers and detector are embedded in the waveguide and all construction is built on a low-cost FR-4 board with 3 levels of metallurgy.