Yuji SUGIURA, Masahiro KANDA, and Osamu MIKAMI

Graduate School of Engineering, Tokai University, 4-1-1 Kitakaname, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa 259-1292, Japan

(Received March 8, 2010; Accepted June 12, 2010)

A new 90° light path conversion device incorporating a core element and a hybrid comb-clad that combines air and polymer components is proposed for optical interconnection. The device has a large refractive index difference (Δ n) between the core and the hybrid comb-clad, which enables a small curvature radius. Extension to an array of M layers × N channels is straightforward. Ray-tracing simulations indicate that the bending loss is as small as 0.21 dB at the small curvature radius of 0.25 mm. Prototypes were fabricated by the photomask transfer method from two types of UV-curable resin; these prototypes exhibited 90° bending loss of 1.65 dB at a core curvature radius of 0.25 mm.

Key words: light path conversion, UV-curable resin, optical interconnection, Opto-Electric Printed Wiring Board (OE-PWB), photomask transfer method