A new method of coupling the light from a laser diode to a Single Mode Fiber (SMF) with large alignment tolerances and without using coupling lenses is presented. A pseudo vertical tapered coupler is designed for light coupling between laser diode and single mode fiber. It has a large input aperture which is about 100 times the size of the laser waveguide cross-section. The tapered coupler provides single mode output and matches the mode size with the single mode fiber . The tapered coupler is fabricated on a silicon optical bench and is located between the laser and the fiber through the silicon micrfabrication process. The misalignment between the fiber and taper coupler can be very small since this is controlled by high precision silicon optical bench patterning processes. The coupler relaxes the laser diode placement accuracies and eliminates the need for a coupling lens. Design Studies showed that the tolerance between the laser diode and taper coupler can be more than +/-5µm misalignment at x-y, and +/-0.5degree tilting angle tolerance and the fabricated assembly results are encouraging with good placement tolerances and coupling efficiency. The laser to single mode fiber coupling tolerances is greatly improved and passive alignment for laser and single mode fiber is realized. The technology can be useful for multi channel optical assembly where significant device and process cost saving can be achieved and is suitable for functional integration for silicon photonics.
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