Application of Micromachining in the PLC Optical Splitter Packaging

Abstract

This paper presents micromachining results on planar-lightwave-circuit (PLC) chips with Si substrate and the quartz substrate by using Ti:Sapphire femtosecond-pulsed laser. The ablation process with femtosecond laser pulses generates nothing of contamination, molten zone, microcracks, shock wave, delamination and recast layer. We also showed that the micromachine for PLC using femtosecond pulsed lasers is superior to that using nanosecond pulsed lasers. The insertion loss and the optical return loss of the 1 ${\times}$ 8 optical power splitters packaged with micromachined input- and output-port U-grooves were less than 11.0 ㏈ and more than 55 ㏈, respectively. The wavelength dependent loss (WDL) was distributed within $\pm$ 0.6 ㏈ and the polarization dependent loss (PDL) was less than 0.2 ㏈.