HIGH PERFORMANCE ALIGNMENT TOLERANT OPTICAL FEED-THRU TECHNOLOGY FOR DEWARS AND OPTOELECTRONICS

This Phase-II SBIR effort demonstrates the performance of a novel Advanced Optical FEED-THRU (AOFT) technology that can be used for strategic and tactical sensor Dewars and other FEED-THRU applications. This advanced FEED-THRU technology replaces conventional wires and their issues including thermal conductivity, radiation and electromagnetic susceptibility, and connector reliability with a dense, wireless, non thermally conductive, alignment tolerant technology that is low cost, highly reliable, and has a greatly reduced electromagnetic interference cross-section. The prior Phase-I effort has demonstrated AOFT feasibility. This FEED-THRU technology is very important since the low electromagnetic interference susceptibility will improve sensor operation in environments rich in internal and external electrical noise; inherent opto-isolation will be provided for critical sensing elements in noisy electrical environments; improved thermal isolation and low power consumption by the feed-thru will enable more efficient sensor Dewars with lower cooling and power overhead; and further, the compact form of the interconnect technology is shown to provide levels of miniaturization that enable compact designs and efficiencies critical to strategic and tactical sensor Dewars. In this effort high performance multichannel AOFTs are designed, fabricated, and demonstrated in a cryogenic environment. Further, non-cryogenic applications are developed that are important for other DoD and commercial applications.