Self-Aligned Sol-Gel Optic Microchip Couplres for Ribbon Interconnect Systems

This SBIR Phase I project intends to develop a novel fabrication and packaging methodology leading to the production of a family of low cost, low loss, and reliable microchip star and tree optical couplers using silicon substrates. These monolithic silicon devices would have self-aligned input and output fibers coupled to sol-gel waveguides and would be compatible with present production techniques which use fiber ribbon connector technology. Microchip star and tree optical waveguide couplers will be made on silicon substrates with on-chip V-grooves providing the capability for inexpensive fiber ribbon attachment. The waveguide structures will be fabricated by a low cost, low temperature sol-gel method and simple photolithographic processes. This process results in precise positioning of the guiding layer and thus has an inherent advantage in terms of low cost packaging when compared to present commercial available devices.