Direct coupling of VCSELs to plastic optical fibers using guide holes patterned in a thick photoresist

We report a simple passive alignment method to couple plastic optical fibers (POFs) to vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for use in parallel optical interconnects. Polymer guide holes were fabricated directly on the top of VCSELs by means of standard photolithography using SU-8 epoxy-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE photonics technology letters 2002-03, Vol.14 (3), p.263-265
Main Authors: Ouchi, T., Imada, A., Sato, T., Sakata, H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arrays
Fiber lasers
Joining
Lithography
Optical coupling
Optical fibers
Optical interconnections
Optical interconnects
Photolithography
Photoresists
Plastics
Polymers
Resists
Standard deviation
Surface emitting lasers
Vertical cavity surface emission lasers
Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers
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Summary:We report a simple passive alignment method to couple plastic optical fibers (POFs) to vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for use in parallel optical interconnects. Polymer guide holes were fabricated directly on the top of VCSELs by means of standard photolithography using SU-8 epoxy-based thick photoresist. Perfluorinated graded-index POFs were inserted and fixed in the guide holes to provide butt-coupled packaging modules. For a VCSEL of 15-μm diameter and a POF of 124-μm core diameter, coupling efficiencies were obtained between about 80% and 50%, depending on drive current. The standard deviation of the efficiency at a drive current of 10 mA was 5.9% for a 1 × 5 array.
ISSN:1041-1135
1941-0174
DOI:10.1109/68.986780