Fabrication of fiber-embedded boards using grooving technique for optical interconnection applications

Abstract

A simple method for fabricating fiber-embedded boards using a grooving technique is described that is quite cost effective and fully compatible with conventional printed circuit board (PCB) processes With no necessity for a specially designed wiring machine. FR-4 plates are grooved using a dicing saw machine and followed by placing optical fibers into the grooves. The fiber-embedded PCBs are laminated conventional PCB processes at a temperature of 180degreesC for 1 h under 47 kg/cm(2) of pressure. The 50/125-mum glass fibers, and the polyimide-coated glass fibers are laminated successfully. In the fiber-embedded boards with a length of 10 cm, the variation of center positions of the embedded glass fibers is about +/-5 mum. The transmitted optical power through the fiber-embedded boards shows a good uniformity of less than +/-0.5 dB variation from the average value for the 12 fiber channels. Data transmission through the board at data rates of 2.5 Gbits/s is achieved. After confirming the successful laminations and the data transmission with the small-scale fiber-embedded boards, a large-scale prototype of the fiber-embedded board for a backplane application is successfully fabricated. (C) 2004 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation, Engineers.