Multimode siloxane polymer components for optical interconnects

This paper presents an overview of multimode waveguides and waveguide components formed from siloxane polymer materials which are suitable for use in optical interconnection applications. The components can be cost-effectively integrated onto conventional PCBs and offer increased functionality in optical transmission. The multimode waveguides exhibit low loss (0.04 dB/cm at 850 nm) and low crosstalk (> -30 dB) performance, large alignment tolerances and negligible mode mixing for short waveguide lengths. Error-free data transmission at 10 Gb/s over 1.4 m long waveguides has been successfully demonstrated. Waveguide crossings exhibit very low excess losses, below 0.01 dB/crossing, and excellent crosstalk performance. Low loss is obtained for waveguide bends with radii of curvature larger than 8 mm and 6 mm for 90deg; and S-shaped bends respectively. High-uniformity splitting is achieved with multimode Y-splitters even in the presence of input misalignments. Y-combiners are shown to benefit from the multimode nature of the waveguides allowing low loss combining (4 dB for an 8×1 device). A large range of power splitting ratios between 30% and 75% is achieved with multimode coupler devices. Examples of system applications benefiting from the use of these components are briefly presented including a terabit capacity optical backplane, a radio-over-fibre multicasting system and a SCM passive optical network.