Single-mode polymer waveguide PCBs for on-board chip-to-chip interconnects (Conference Presentation)

Pluggable optics are being pushed to their limits in terms of face plate density and power consumption requirements within emerging mega data centers and HPCs applications. Future applications seek silicon photonics based optical engines with ability for high channel count and throughput beyond 1Tb/s. In this paper, we show our results in development of single mode polymer-based optical-electrical PCBs (OEPCBs) supporting the emerging Si-Pho host PCB platforms with multi-terabit on-board routing capability for chip-to-chip communications. Single mode polymer waveguides (SM-PWGs) are fabricated using new photopatternable optical silicone materials (WG-2211/WG-2511-WG2711) on conventional PCBs. Test platform PCB shows designs with varying core sizes (20/15/12/9/7µm) and channel lengths (5-15cm). The measurements results show single-mode waveguides loss as less 0.4 dB/cm at 1310nm. Furthermore, the result show new waveguide material to be compliance for both rigid and flexible PCBs. OEPCB compliance evaluation test results shown in the paper includes results of lamination, chemical compliance, drilling, and plating tests. The results shown in the paper show first time ever fabrication of single mode polymer waveguide OEPCBs in production environment.