Polymer waveguide with integrated reflector mirrors for an inter-chip link system

A polymer waveguide with integrated reflector mirrors is presented for an inter-chip link system. The cost-effective and repeatable technology for the integration of a polymer multimode waveguide and out-of-plane 45° reflector mirrors was developed for optical coupling between the light-sources and the light-detectors. This method enabled us to fabricate the waveguides and 45° reflector mirrors using a one-shot embossing process for inexpensive mass production. The optical inter-chip link system consisted of a metal optical bench, a module printed circuit board (PCB), a driver/receiver IC, a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL)/photo-detector (PD) array, and an optical waveguide composed of integrated reflector mirrors. The presented data transfer measurements of the optical inter-chip link system are shown to be successful at a data rate of 5 Gb/s.