Eric Michael Breitung

A polymer-based platform technology for integrated photonics

Polymers have been studied as an alternate material to silica for optical interconnects and photonic devices for the last decade. In this paper we review the work performed at GE Global Research in the area of polymer based material systems for photonic applications. A description of the application of the technology to several different areas is presented. Some of these application areas include optical interconnects, optoelectronic integration and electro-optical devices using polymer material systems. The overall effort includes areas of research from the basic chemistry of polymer optical materials to the development of photonic components. Specifically the use of polymer materials as a platform technology for hybrid integration in the development of multi-functional sub systems is reviewed.

High-density multimode photonic backplane

The development of a photonic backplane for high-speed and high-bandwidth communications is presented. This hybrid, multimode, multi-channel backplane structure contains both electrical and optical interconnects, suitable for next-generation high-speed servers with terabit backplane capacity. Removable and all-passively aligned high density interconnects on this backplane are achieved by polymer based optical waveguides with integrated micro-optics and VCSEL arrays on conventional printed circuit boards. The fabrication of this photonic backplane requires few additional steps outside a traditional board-manufacturing environment and is largely compatible with existing processes.