Cost-effective optical transceiver subassembly with lens-integrated high-k, low-Tg glass for optical interconnection

Abstract

Optical interconnection is a key technology to overcome bandwidth bottlenecks in high-performance computing and high-end servers. An optical subassembly that consists of a transparent substrate and optical devices is attractive for optical interconnection owing to the ease of optical coupling between an integrated lens and optical devices. However, there are difficulties associated with the fabrication of the substrate. To solve these problems, we propose an optical transceiver subassembly using high-k, low-Tg glass. The transceiver subassembly helps in overcoming not only the difficulty in processing conventionally used substrates but also the limitation on high-speed signal transmission by the coplanar waveguide on those substrates. We successfully demonstrate error-free operation at 10 Gb/s and 14 Gb/s with the fabricated optical transceiver subassembly that contains a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) array, a driver array, a photodiode (PD) array, and a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) array.