Silicon waferboard-based single-mode optical fiber interconnects

Abstract

In an extension of previous work, hybrid integration utilizing silicon waferboard plafforms has been shown to be useful in building complete single-mode, optical fiber interconnect links. The fabrication and testing of high-performance optical interconnect array transmitter modules and receiver modules is described in this paper. The silicon waferboards include alignment features for passively aligning laser arrays and turning mirrors for backside illumination of metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) detectors. Transmission rates of 1.4 Gb/s per fiber over single-mode optical fiber have been demonstrated. The fourchannel link developed in this work was tested over a distance of 1 km and exhibited a link margin of greater than 11 dB. The bit error ratio was less than and the crosstalk for adjacent channel traffic was about -20 dB at 1 GHz. This effort has confirmed the feasibility of employing silicon waferboard passive optical alignment techniques to potentially lower the cost of high speed optical interconnects.Index Terms-Optical interconnects, passive aliment, metalsemiconductor-metal detectors, laser array, silicon waferboard, optoelectronic arrays

Optical reflectivity of micromachined {111}-oriented silicon mirrors for optical input - output couplers

“…The optical I-O couplers which are implemented with silicon bulk-micromachined structures and optical fibers usually include V-grooves to align optical fibers and silicon mirrors to reflect optical beams [8,9]. Recently, the reflectivity as well as the tilting angle of the silicon mirrors have been major concerns in realizing silicon micromachined optical I-O couplers.…”

“…Standard anisotropic etching techniques can be used to expose {111} planes since they etch so much more slowly than any other crystal plane in etchants such as KOH. For this reason, {111} planes have been widely investigated as reflecting surfaces [7][8][9][10]. Although a 45 • mirror would seem the logical choice for an optical I-O coupler, a nonstandard wafer whose polished surface is 9.7 • out of the (100) plane is required as the substrate if one wishes to use {111} planes as the 45 • reflecting surfaces.…”

The microstructure investigation of flip-chip laser diode bonding on silicon substrate by using indium-gold solder

“…There are several methods to integrate III-V semiconductors with Si such as hetero-epitaxial growth, epitaxial lift-off, eutectic-metal bonding (EMB) and flip-chip bonding. Flip-chip bonding has been used widely because this bonding technology could provide superior electrical performance, proper reliability, high input/output (I/O) density, efficient heat conduction and self-alignment [1]- [5] Solder has been used widely as die-attach material for optoelectronic packaging, and its application is being further expanded because of the development of the flip-chip assembly. A number of parameters such as thermal, mechanical, electrical, and optical factors are needed to consider in obtaining a highly reliable joint.…”