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2OptoElectronics Packaging & Automation Lab, 916 Engineering Tower University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-2575 1. Challenges for microclipsThis microclip based fiber holding system consists of anisotropically etched grooves and pits having free-standing flexible holding clips in different shapes along groove and pit edges to support the fibers and clips as schematically shown in Figure 1. In general, the requirements on the holding microclips are contradictory. The holding microclips should be flexible in order to install or withdraw the fiber, on the other hand, it should be enough stiff to provide the contact force in order to hold the fiber in V-grooves. An early evaluation and optimization of the desired system is efficient way to reduce the production time, cost and the risk for achieving an undesirable system performance [1,2]. It will be necessary to develop a simple but efficient method to optimize geometry of the holding microclips with the prescribed clamping force and end displacement. Based on the principle of optimal stress design, i.e., uniform distribution of maximal stress on the surface of the holding microclip beam, the optimal geometry of the beam section is determined. The effect of the beam thickness and material property on the optimal section is studied. It has been proved that geometry obtained by the optimal model leads to minimal structure weight. ff Figure 1. Diagram of V-groove structure with holding microclips 2. Modeling of optimal designThe optimal stress design here may be described as the uniform distribution of maximal stress in the beam, i.e., assume the maximal stress on the upper and lower surfaces of beam be equal to the yield stress 5(0( 177=±t= p(Ty () with I/p is safe parameter and oy refers to the failure strength. Here 4 and ri are the local coordinates of beam as shown in Figure 2. The width and thickness of the beam are denoted by b(4) and t, respectively.