Zakariyah, SS;
Conway, PP;
Hutt, DA;
Selviah, DR;
Wang, K;
Rygate, J;
Calver, J;
(2011)
Fabrication of Polymer Waveguides by Laser Ablation Using a 355 nm Wavelength Nd:YAG Laser.
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY
, 29
(23)
3566 - 3576.
10.1109/JLT.2011.2171318.
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Abstract
The demand for optical waveguides integrated into Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) is increasing as the limitations of copper interconnects for greater than 10 Gb/s data rates are being reached. Optical polymer materials offer a good solution due to their relatively low cost and compatibility with traditional PCB manufacturing processes. Laser ablation is one method of manufacture, for which excimer lasers have been used, but UV Nd:YAG (Neodymium-doped Yttrium Aluminium Garnet) lasers are an attractive alternative due to their widespread use within the PCB industry for drilling vias. In this paper, 355 nm, 60 ns pulse length UV Nd:YAG laser ablation of Truemode™ acrylate-based optical polymer was investigated. The UV Nd:YAG laser was found to be able to ablate the polymer efficiently and the effects of laser ablation power and pulse repetition frequency (PRF) on depth of ablation were studied and used to determine preferred settings. 45 μm × 45 μm multimode optical waveguides were fabricated to demonstrate the process and optical loss measurements were carried out. These measurements demonstrated that the structures were able to transmit light at the data communications wavelength of 850 nm (NIR), but further work is required to reduce the level of loss. The use of UV Nd:YAG as a possible alternative to excimer for laser micromachining would facilitate the rapid deployment of the optical technology within the PCB industry.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Fabrication of Polymer Waveguides by Laser Ablation Using a 355 nm Wavelength Nd:YAG Laser |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1109/JLT.2011.2171318 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JLT.2011.2171318 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2011 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. |
| Keywords: | High bit rate, interconnection, laser ablation, optical backplane, optical circuit board, optical waveguides, PCB, polymer, UV Nd:YAG |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Electronic and Electrical Eng |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1317559 |
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