1-TO-12 SURFACE NORMAL 3-DIMENSIONAL OPTICAL INTERCONNECTS

We present a surface normal optical interconnect with a 1-to-12 collinear fan-out. Two types of polymer-based holograms were fabricated to provide a collinear 1-to-12 fan-out from guided mode to substrate modes and twelve 1-to-1 surface normal interconnects. Fluctuation of up to 7.2 dB for the 1-to-12 fan-out hologram was observed due to the oscillating and the film saturation effects of the transmission hologram. Diffraction efficiency better than 70% was observed for all the total internal reflection holograms. The result reported herein greatly enhanced optical signal processing capability of guided wave optical interconnects. The advantages of free space optical interconnect, such as global interconnect, three dimension, massive fan-out/fan-in capabilities, and surface normal optical interconnect, can be realized using the demonstrated architecture. The coupling from waveguide to fiber can be realized from the surface rather than the edge of a photonic integrated circuit.