Development of Built-in Standard Optical Plugs for Waveguide-Embedded Optical Printed Circuit Boards

Optical Printed Circuit Boards (OPCBs) based on embedded waveguides have attracted more and more attention in the past few years due to the rapidly increasing demand for bandwidth (over 10Gb/s) in telecommunications and computing systems. Because the optical waveguide fabrication process and the accuracy required are not compatible with the existing PCB manufacturing technology, mass production of waveguide-embedded OPCBs remains to be a challenge. In addition, a low-cost accurate alignment technique for the optical waveguide terminals has been considered as a crucial requirement for the commercialization of OPCBs. Regardless of many reported experimental demonstrations, there is still no simple passive optical interconnection method for waveguide-embedded OPCBs. In this project, we propose a simple and cost-effective solution based on our recently developed hot-embossing technology at CityU. Our proposed solution allows simultaneous production of self-aligned optical plugs and waveguides in the fabrication of OPCBs and can be readily integrated with the existing PCB manufacturing environment, which makes possible mass production of OPCBs with optical interface for commercial standard Mechanical-Transferable (MT) plugs/sockets. The outcomes of the project will benefit all industries that need OPCBs and the development of cloud and big-data processing technologies needed for transforming Hong Kong into a smart city. 2. Project