Optoelectronic Printed Circuit Board Realised by Two Photon Absorption_Langer_Electronica_2008

The integration of optical interconnections onto PCBs (printed circuit boards) is an emerging field that arouses rapidly growing interest worldwide, due to a continuously increasing demand for high data rates, along with a progressive miniaturization of devices and components. For high-speed data transfer, materials and integration concepts are required for which enable highspeed short-range connections. An innovative approach is presented which shows the fabrication of optical waveguides by TPA (two-photon absorption) processes. In contrast to one-photon absorption, which only allows a two-dimensional respectively lateral modification of a polymer, this technology allows a modification within the volume resulting in 3D-microstructures inside the polymer layer. Embedded opto-electronic components can easily be connected to corresponding waveguides and thereby bypassing expensive and time consuming active alignment processes. Recent experiments demonstrated 3-dimensional crossing waveguides transmitting data rates exceeding 6 Gbit/s.