Design and fabrication of the Y-branch waveguide for optical printed circuit board (OPCB) interconnect

Abstract

A multimode Y-branch interconnect optical waveguide was designed and fabricated. The transmitting properties of the Y-branch splitter were designed and simulated by using commercial waveguide simulation software. For a 1×2 Y-branch splitter with 50μm×50μm channel waveguide, the relationship between insertion loss and splitting angle was calculated. According to the theoretical result, a multimode Y-branch waveguide was fabricated based on a UV-lithography method on the printed circuit board. To balance the trade-off between the insertion loss and the component size, the Y-branch waveguide was designed of two sections with different splitting angles. An insertion loss of 0.36dB was obtained theoretically with a 5cm Y-branch waveguide.