Optoelectronic Packaging Technology for High Speed Switching

The principal objective of this proposal is to develop a design for the packaging of the high performance optoelectronic computer (HPOC) module. In addition, we will design the optical interconnect section of the HPOC module, and fabricate and test HPOC module sub-assemblies. A design will be developed for a structure which uses solder engineering to combine the HPOC module components (VCSEL, array, optical interconnect sub-assembly, and receiver array) into one solid, stable package. The ability of solder engineering techniques to passively align electronic and optical components to tolerances of "approx" 1 mm will be exploited to simplify the alignment task. A modified version of the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm will be used to design a compound diffractive optical element which combines the functions of most, or all, of the discrete optical components which currently compose the optical interconnect section of the HPOC module. Reducing the number of components will greatly reduce the complexity of the assembly and packaging task, and should also significantly reduce the cost of the final device. Selected HPOC module component will be fabricated and will be combined into sub-assemblies which will be tested to verify the performance of our designs.