A 3-D planar microlens for an effective monolithic optical interconnection system

Author

Sung-Il Chang ; Jun-Bo Yoon

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Korea Adv. Inst. of Sci. & Technol., Daejeon, South Korea

Volume

18

Issue

7

fYear

2006

fDate

4/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

814

Lastpage

816

Abstract

A three-dimensional (3-D) planar microlens with curved sidewalls was fabricated by using the recently developed 3-D diffuser lithography and the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) replication method. The sidewall of the fabricated 3-D planar microlens had a radius of curvature of 140 μm, and a well-defined focal spot with a width of 1.5 μm and a height of 3 μm was observed. An excellent single-mode fiber-to-fiber coupling efficiency of 71% was demonstrated by applying the developed 3-D planar microlens, which displayed more than two times the coupling ability compared to that of a conventional two-dimensional planar microlens with straight sidewalls. Finally, it was verified that the coupling efficiency was little affected by variation in the process conditions used for the photoresist mold fabrication.

Keywords

integrated optics; integrated optoelectronics; microlenses; monolithic integrated circuits; optical design techniques; optical fabrication; optical fibres; optical interconnections; photoresists; replica techniques; 1.5 mum; 3 mum; 3D diffuser lithography; 3D planar microlens; curved-sidewall microlens; fiber-to-fiber coupling efficiency; focal spot; lens fabrication; monolithic optical interconnection system; photoresist mold fabrication; polydimethylsiloxane replication method; single-mode coupling efficiency; two-dimensional planar microlens; Biomedical optical imaging; Integrated optics; Lenses; Lithography; Microoptics; Optical coupling; Optical device fabrication; Optical fibers; Optical interconnections; Resists; Diffuser; microlenses; optical detection; optical interconnection; polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS); three-dimensional (3-D) lithography;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2006.871840

Filename

1605298