Passive Polymeric Waveguide Materials for Optical Interconnects

Abstract

AbstractThe need for higher bandwidth interconnect schemes to relieve the communications bottleneck caused by the ever increasing speeds of discreet electronic devices has led to a renewed interest in thin film optical waveguides as interconnect media. This paper reviews some of the polymeric materials that have been investigated for use as thin film passive optical waveguides over the past ten years. Several proposed applications for these waveguides are presented and the specific material requirements of these applications are discussed. The strengths and weaknesses of specific polymeric materials are considered in view of these requirements. While reference is made to a variety of polymers that have been considered for these applications, emphasis is placed on the relative merits of polyimide and acrylate polymer based systems.