Abstract
We experimentally demonstrate that the Mosquito method is capable of fabricating polymer optical waveguides with single-mode cores. The Mosquito method we developed is a technique to form planar polymer waveguides using a commercially available microdispenser. In this article, the flow of the core monomer dispensed from the tip of the needle is simulated using fluid analysis software. The results show that the shape of the needle periphery significantly affects the fabrication of perfectly circular cross-sectional cores. In addition, we demonstrate that the Mosquito method is capable of reducing the MFD variation to 0.4 μm. We find such a small MFD fluctuation is comparable to that of typical single-mode optical fibers.
Highlights
I N RECENT years, with the rapid development of cloud computing services, large-scale data centers need to increase the processing speed of switches and servers while reducing power consumption
Optical cables with local connectors (LC connectors) on both ends have been widely deployed to connect racks in data centers, but those cables are gradually replaced by fiber ribbons with multiple-fiber push-on (MPO) connectors to increase the bandwidth density at board edges
In order to apply to optical connection components such as FIFO devices for multicore fibers (MCFs), we designed polymer optical waveguides with GI circular cores which are fabricated using the Mosquito method to satisfy the single-mode condition, and a method to reduce the fluctuation of the optical characteristics among the multiple cores was investigated both theoretically and experimentally
Summary
I N RECENT years, with the rapid development of cloud computing services, large-scale data centers need to increase the processing speed of switches and servers while reducing power consumption. Even the number of fibers to be aligned in an MPO connector has increased to realize higher bandwidth density [1]. Introduction of multicore fibers (MCFs) is expected as a solution to dramatically increase the number of optical channels per connector cross-sectional. Some optical connectors have been reported that improve the optical channel per cross-sectional area several times or more by replacing existing single-core fibers (SCFs) with MCFs [2]. In this paper, we fabricate single-mode waveguides with multiple circular cores that show small fluctuations of mode-field diameter (MFD) and intercore pitch from the desired values, in order to create a unique FIFO device
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