William Robert Holland

Optical fiber circuits

Emerging high capacity electronic systems are increasingly adopting optoelectronics as a means of surpassing the limitations of electrical interconnection. Although photonic technology has long been preferred in long-haul communications, optics is now quickly becoming a viable option for short link applications. As optical components begin to populate all levels of the system hierarchy, serious problems arise in the management of fiber cables. In this paper, we present a coordinated and manufacturable solution to this problem in the form of optical fiber circuits useful for backplane and inter-shelf communications.<<ETX>>

AlO bonding: a method of joining oxide optical components to aluminum coated substrates

With the increased use of photonic packages, there are needs for reliable and low cost methods of attaching optical components. Packages based on silicon optical bench (SiOB) technology include oxide coated ball-lenses and silica fibers which are generally epoxied in anisotropically etched features of silicon substrates. The reliable attachment of these micro-optical components requires the application of small (approximately 1 nanoliter) quantities of epoxy at precise locations on the substrate. This is a time consuming process and requires considerable operator training and skill. Dispensing too much epoxy can deteriorate the optical performance of the device and dispensing too little results in an insufficient holding power. AlO bonding is an alternative attachment technique, under development, which forms solid-state bonds directly between these oxide-components and aluminum thin film coated silicon optical bench substrates and therefore does not require the handling of additives, such as epoxy, at the bond interface. This paper includes: methods of bonding ball-lenses and fibers; an interfacial analysis and proposed bonding mechanism derived from SEM/metallographic photomicrographs and thermodynamic data; destructive test results as a function of bonding and material parameters and; in situ loss measurements through AlO bonded components (multi-, single mode fibers and ball-lenses) during the bonding procedures and subsequent thermal cycling (-40 to 80/spl deg/C and from ambient to -195.8/spl deg/C) tests.<<ETX>>

Intra-system interconnection using optical fiber fabrics

Presents flexible substrate optical fibre circuits; interconnections, packaging and design.<<ETX>>

Fiber circuits for packaging and interconnection

Perhaps the major impediment to more efficient manufacturing of telecommunications optical systems is the lack of more efficient means of assembling and packaging high fiber counts. We will review recent applications that make use of novel techniques for designing and using machine-made fiber interconnection fabrics.

Packaging and manufacture of optical circuits for signal processing

Fiber circuits open several new methods of building systems for optical networks. These applications take advantage of the unique abilities of the circuits to control the position, length, and shape of a large collections of fibers. In all situations, the functions provided by the circuits are not readily realizable through any other known method of construction and illustrate the high value added by a fundamentally simple element. In the future, we anticipate many situations where the control of fiber properties is critical not only as an efficient manufacturing method, but also as an element of the product operation.