Low Cost Sol-Gel-on-Silicon Self-Aligned Optics

This SBIR Phase I project intends to develop a new fabrication and packaging technology that would lead to ultra low cost, high quality integrated optics device with improved performance. We are proposing in this program to develop monolithic sol-gel-on-silicon structures that utilize the low cost and low temperature sol-gel method to form silica based optical waveguides on silicon with V-grooves for passive fiber pigtailing alignment. Huge cost reduction of integrated optics devices is expected because several cost and labor intensive manufacturing processes will be either eliminated or simplified. The major part of the cost reduction results from the self-alignment scheme. The on-chip V-grooves allow the waveguides to be connected to fibers with sub-micron precision. This eliminate the currently required interconnections between a waveguide chip and silicon V-groove connectors. The self-alignment scheme can be realized by using the sol-gel process to form waveguide structures on silicon chips in a few simplified steps. The low temperature sol-gel process also allows full integration of light sources, beam routing devices, and detectors onto a sinqle silicon chip. This technology can have an enormous impact in both military and civilian-oriented optical communications, signal processing and optical sensing applications. These low-cost integrated optic devices will facilitate significant advances military and civilian applications where information transfer is of utmost importance.