Optical Switch Manufactured using Direct Write Method

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop enabling technology for construction of a small, low cost fiber optic switch. The switch will be based upon vertical cavity surface emitting laser arrays and PIN photodiode arrays, both coupled directly to a silicon switching/interfacing integrated circuit. The switch design and fabrication processes will be enabled by new interconnect technologies using direct-write of both organic materials and liquid metals using ink jet printing technology. Collimating or focusing polymer microlenses will be printed directly onto the vertical cavity surface emitting laser arrays with photolithographic accuracy, coupling the output of the vertical cavity surface emitting lasers directly into arrays of multimode optical fibers. The same will be true for coupling into detector arrays. Solder-Jet technology will be used to electrically interconnect the active optical elements to the silicon integrated circuit with practically zero interconnect distance, drastically decreasing parasitic effects
The optical and electrical interconnect methods developed in this project will have commercial applications far broader than the fiber optic switch. Some of the other applications include: fiber optic transceivers, imaging sensors, read/write heads, laser sources for printers, optical sensors for medical diagnostics, micro-assembly, micro-electromechanical machines packaging and 3D-packaging.