Uv-curable resin microlens on patterned substrate for optical interconnect

Abstract

An optical interconnect has attracted much interest as a possible solution to solve the bottleneck of conventional electric interconnect for realizing high speed and wide bandwidth transmission in shorter distance less than 100 cm. However, the optical interconnect requires high and easy optical coupling between optical wiring and optical sources/photodiodes. The implementation of the microlens seems as one of the possible ways to solve the problem. In this paper, a number of uniform microlens have been fabricated using UV curable resin on optically transparent pillars with 125 um diameter and 200 um height, prepared on the substrate. The unique pillars are fabricated by Mask- Transfer Self-Written Waveguide Technology, and microlens with 125um diameter and a few 10 um are fabricated using dipping method. Both pillars and microlenses are fabricated using UV curable resin. The optical coupling efficiency is expected to be improved in optical interconnect application.