This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JLT.2016.2529651, Journal of
Lightwave Technology
JLT-18585-2015.R1 1

Large Optical Backplane with Embedded

Graded-Index Glass Waveguides and Fiber-flex
Termination
L. Brusberg, S. Whalley, R. C. A. Pitwon Member IEEE, F. R. Faridi, H. Schröder

 a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42 percent through

Abstract— Introduction of electro-optical circuit board (EOCB) 2020. By 2020, the world will be generating 40 zettabytes of
technologies based on embedded glass waveguides in the system data annually or more than 5,200 gigabytes of data for every
enclosure of current data storage, compute or switch platforms person on the planet [3]. The ratio of dedicated compute,
will be instrumental in accommodating the prohibitive bandwidth
storage and server capabilities will vary from data center to
densities projected in exascale data centers, access networks and
high performance computing environments in future. The main data center depending on the application space giving rise to
focus of this paper is, therefore, on the realization of large EOCB data storage, compute and switch systems ranging in
backplanes (350 x 465) mm²) with passive dual star interconnect complexity and size from simple high capacity storage arrays
topologies. The waveguides are embedded inside glass panels using to petascale high-performance computer and storage racks.
a two-step thermal ion exchange process [1]. The fabricated The interconnect technologies appropriate to the different
embedded waveguides are then characterized for propagation and
hierarchical levels within a data center, such as rack-to-rack,
coupling losses across different wavelength ranges and for
different coupling arrangements. The fabrication process for these enclosure-to-enclosure, board-to-board or even chip-to-chip
large panels is briefly explained accompanied by the lamination are determined by the corresponding protocols and speeds
process of four separate glass panels. The connectivity between operating at those levels. In any case the required increase in
backplane and peripheral cards is addressed using fiber flex channel densities and data rates to accommodate the growth in
termination with two possible waveguide interfaces - actively data demand are definitely expected to overwhelm the
assembled pluggable interface and passively assembled adhesive
traditional copper cable and PCB interconnect in such systems
bonded interface. A demonstration platform is also finally
reported and the viability evaluated for optical connectivity and today. Data center systems currently make use of standard
system efficiency is tested for the whole system containing fiber optical cable and front edge pluggable transceiver technology
flex termination. to support high speed external connections to top-of-the rack
or higher tier switch enclosures, however it will become
Index Terms— Electro-optical circuit boards, ion-exchange, necessary to migrate optical interconnect into the system
glass optical waveguides, graded index waveguides, optical enclosure itself to overcome the copper bottleneck. Electro-
interconnects, optical glass optical circuit board (EOCB) and mid-board optical
transceiver subassemblies (optical engines) will be the two key
I. INTRODUCTION enabling elements of this migration. In first step very low-loss
Over the last decade the world has seen an exponential growth optical fiber shuffles can be easily combined with electrical
in the creation and storage of digital information, with around PCBs but with higher optical circuit complexity [4] including
92 percent of all the data in the world having being generated multiple optical layers planar waveguide technologies are
in the last two years [2]. This has been fueled primarily by the required which will be embedded as inner PCB layer with up
proliferation of mobile computing and data capturing systems, to eight or more optical layers and waveguide pitch of 125 µm
such as smart phones and tablets. The combination of vastly or below [5]. A common implementation would be an optical
increased data generation and smaller mobile devices, backplane with MTP compliant interfaces, which can be
constrained by their size to retain all information locally, are connected directly or via pluggable board-to-board interfaces
the key driver for increased remote storage and computing in to the optical engine on a peripheral linecard as schematically
Cloud data center environments. The consolidation of digital shown in Fig. 1.
storage and processing of data in such environments gathered
from a very high number of distributed sources paves the way
for ‘Big Data’ and ‘Internet of Things’ applications,
contributing to the projected growth in global data demand at

Some of the research leading to these results has received funding from S. Whalley is with ILFA Feinstleitertechnik GmbH, 30559 Hannover,
German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Germany (e-mail: [email protected]).
L. Brusberg, F. R. Faridi, H. Schröder is with Fraunhofer Institute for R C. A. Pitwon is with Seagate Systems, PO9 1SA Havant, U.K. (e-mail:
Reliability and Microintegration, 13355 Berlin, Germany (e-mail: [email protected]).
[email protected]).

0733-8724 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JLT.2016.2529651, Journal of
Lightwave Technology
JLT-18585-2015.R1 2

The embedded optical interconnections are depicted in blue

(going to switch card 1) and green (going to switch card 2) in
the optical EOCB backplane layout in Fig. 2.

Fig. 1. Optical engines on different line-cards are optically interconnected

(red line) over optical fiber links on the line card, pluggable optical board-to-
board connectors and an electro-optical backplane with integrated waveguides.

In our work we address two problems: 1) Identifying a viable

alternative to polymer waveguides [6][7], as they are subject to
higher optical losses in the wavelength ranges above 850 nm,
like 980..1000nm and 1310/1550nm. Those wavelengths are of Fig. 2. Optical dual-star interconnection design for EOCB backplanes
interest because of VCSEL/PD availability and emerging silicon (700 x 465) mm²) for server rack application.
photonics technologies. Certain perfluorinated polymers do
exhibit lower losses at these longer wavelengths due to the Fig. 3 shows the design of the EOCB backplane having an area
change to the bond vibration overtones [8], however the of (350 x 465) mm², which represents one half of the full layout
presence of halogens can have detrimental effects on PCB design concept depicted in Fig. 2. In order to implement the full
operation, in addition to health implications and cost. 2) concept, two of such EOCB backplane’s would have to be
Fabrication of optical backplanes in larger sizes suitable for rack combined for a rack backplane with total area of
or enclosure integration. Glass is a thermal stable optical (700 x 465) mm². The design incorporates four separate glass
material well known as substrate for integrated optics. Different panels inside one EOCB backplane, each having an area of
concepts has been demonstrated using glass for optical multi- (143 x 190) mm². This development work will show for the first
chip modules (OMCM) and optical backplanes by free-space time the lamination of up to four separate glass panels in the
propagation in fused silica or other glasses [9][10][11][12]. same layer and allow the possibilities and effectiveness of such
Those approaches are only applicable for optical interconnects an approach to be evaluated. The reason for using four separate
in modules because of high material costs of fused silica and panels instead of one or two larger glass waveguide panels is to
precise optics with sub-micron dimensions. Another challenge reduce the risk and primary costs for pass-test of glass
is the precise free-space coupling between components and waveguide panels reaching the full performance on all
linecards. In this work the waveguides will be planar integrated channels. As studied in previous work, the processed glass
in commercial available display glass by thermal ion-exchange waveguide panels are separated by CO2 laser scribing and
processing beyond the experimental stage of EOCB mechanical breaking, resulting in coupling interfaces with a
demonstrators recently demonstrated with areas of high surface quality and well-defined shapes [16]. Direct in-
(233 x 303) mm² [13][14][15]. Size enlargement has to be plane coupling with optical fiber arrays can be achieved through
regarded as very challenging for all PCB processes in terms of openings in the FR4-layers, granting access to the inner glass
handling and tolerance. coupling interface and allowing the assembly of optical
waveguide termination. The width of the FR4 openings is
II. OPTICAL BACKPLANE DESIGN defined to 12.3 mm for assembling of MT receptacle mounts or
fiber assemblies directly on the glass in this area. The EOCB
A design concept was devised for an EOCB backplane
backplane design comprises also two windows for partner logos
appropriate for a data center system enclosure, which
and to show sections of the glass waveguide panels embedded
incorporated a “dual star” interconnect topology in order to
within. There are also multiple 3 mm holes for mounting
ensure failover redundancy in the system. The dual star
purposes included on the left and the right margins as well as
interconnect design basically implements a central switching
along the central axis in the design.
architecture whereby two independent central switch cards are
each connected to 16 peripheral line cards allowing data traffic
routing and switching within the enclosure. This is a common
failover architecture in data center and access network systems,
providing a strong level of redundancy, in that, should one of
the switch cards fail, the other switch card will continue the
required data routing functions on all peripheral line cards,
allowing the failed card to be replaced without disruption.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JLT.2016.2529651, Journal of
Lightwave Technology
JLT-18585-2015.R1 3

alignment markers with (0.5 x 0.5) mm² dimensions are for

laser cutting and the point and line markers are used for layer
alignment during lamination. The glass panels also contain
partner logos inscribed in the aluminum surface. Four of such
glass waveguide panels are patterned on one large glass panel
having size of (420 x 570) mm² for panel processing and
subsequent separation by laser cutting before waveguide
processing. The full glass panel layout for waveguide
processing is shown in Fig. 5.

Q1 Q2

Fig. 3. EOCB backplane layout design with FR4 layer (green) with area of
(350 x 465) mm², electrical layer (blue) and four embedded glass waveguide
panels each (143 x 190) mm² (grey lined).

In the optical waveguide layout, each of the four panels has

dimensions of (143 x 190) mm² with a 4 mm gap separating the Q3
Q4
two panels residing on each side of the switch cards. Every
panel contains eight waveguide groups (WG1 to WG8) as
shown in Fig. 4 and each group comprises an array of twelve
waveguides. The waveguides within an array have a center-to-
center channel separation of 250 µm, in compliance with Fig. 5. Layout of four waveguide panels (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) with area of
(143 x 190) mm² are patterned on glass panel for combined fabrication.
conventional parallel optical fiber interfaces such as those
based on the MT standards for interconnection to pluggable
linecards. All the waveguides have a 90° arc circular bend III. GLASS WAVEGUIDE PANEL FABRICATION
section with straight section on both edges. In the work we used Corning Gorilla Glass 1 (distributed by
Schröder Spezialglas, Germany) only available in a thickness
of 550 μm. The waveguide fabrication process consists of a
two-step thermal ion-exchange between hot salt-melt and glass
WG1 suitable for large panel and batch processing. The equipment of
WG2
the glass waveguide panel process line at Fraunhofer IZM is
shown in Fig. 6. Process steps like sputtering (PVD),
WG3 lithography (Dip-Coater, LDI, etc.) and glass panel separation
WG4
(Laser-Cutter) are suitable for formats up to (610 x 457) mm².
The panel size for ion-exchange process is currently limited to
WG5 panels having area of (305 x 457) mm² because of hot salt-melt
bath size restrictions. So far we have processed waveguide
WG6 panels with a maximum size of (305 x 228) mm². The focus in
WG8
WG7 this work is to demonstrate higher yields by processing the
diffusion mask of four separate sub-panels (Q1…Q4) on one
Fig. 4. Layout of waveguide panel (143 x 190) mm² with eight waveguide large panel, separate the large panel after lithography and
groups each with 12 channels. Radius of curvature is 137, 121, 105, 89, 73, process in parallel four panels in the hot salt-melt bath by batch
57, 41, and 25 mm.
processing. Waveguides reside only on one side of the glass
Given that, the higher the average radius of curvature of a given sub-panels Q1…4 and extend beyond the edges of the targeted
waveguide group, the longer its average length, changes in waveguide panel to ensure optical end facet quality after final
waveguide bend loss are compensated by changes in laser cutting.
propagation loss from group to group. The waveguide length of
WG1 has a length of 25 cm. In contrast the length of WG8 is
4.4 cm.
For alignment assistance in different steps of the fabrication
process there are some alignment marks present at the corners
of the glass panels. These marks are made of aluminum and Fig. 6. Fraunhofer IZM glass panel waveguide process line.
have different structures for different purposes. The rectangle

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JLT-18585-2015.R1 4

A. Patterning of large glass panel and laser separation

First, the diffusion barrier was deposited on both glass surface
sides. We were using an aluminum layer of 400 nm thickness,
which is DC-sputtered by Creavac Creamet 600 physical vapor
deposition (PVD) equipment (Fig. 6). Then one lithography and
wet-chemical processing step are required to pattern the
aluminum mask on the front-side of the panel. For lithography
we used dip coating for double-sided photoresist deposition
(Fig. 6). The exposure of the front-side optical trace geometry
and alignment marks was carried out on an Orbotec Paragon
Ultra 200 laser direct imaging (LDI) system (Fig. 6) Fig. 9. Glass panel (220 x 285) mm² with diffusion mask after laser
transferring the diffusion mask layout of Fig. 5 to the separation.
photoresist layer. The red pattern (lines, partner logos, etc.) was
exposed by the LDI. The exposed glass panel was developed B. Ion exchange batch processing
and layout successfully transferred to the photoresist layer as During the diffusion process four glass panels were vertically
shown in Fig. 7. immersed into the hot salt-melt bath containing salt melt. For
the salt melt we used a diluted AgNO3 mixture in the first
diffusion step. The sodium ions in the glass were exchanged by
the silver ions in the mixture, which causes a localized increase
in the refractive index of the glass. The highest refractive index
change occurs at the glass surface but decreasing with depth
below the surface compared to that of the bulk glass. The
isotropic concentration gradient of the silver ions below the
glass panel surface is proportional to the resulting refractive
index gradient. Aluminum mask was removed from the glass
surfaces and resist was used to protect alignment marks and
Fig. 7. Developed photoresist on aluminum deposited glass panel with area
of (440 x 570) mm². logos to remain. The concentration of the silver ions in the
surface area was reduced by a second diffusion step, by which
Then the aluminum layer on the front-side was opened with the refractive index maximum (waveguide core center) was
acid treatment and the photoresist was removed completely as effectively shifted to a certain depth below the glass surface.
shown in Fig. 8. Afterwards the glass was extensively cleaned by wet chemical
processing. In the last stage of the panel fabrication, the glass
was cut into 143 × 190 mm² panels in accordance to the EOCB
backplane design requirements. This was done using a CO2
laser cutting system [17] with the ability to produce
substantially higher optical end facet qualities than could be
achieved by diamond reel cutting. With four-fold increase in the
edge strength and trace stability along with an RMS surface
roughness of 40 nm, the glass edges processed by this cutting
method guarantees low loss optical coupling [18] to the
waveguides without post-processing steps, such as polishing.
Fig. 8. Aluminum diffusion mask layer on glass.
For waveguide termination, aluminum fiducials were patterned
on the glass surface and a pair of fitting bores was drilled by
After completing the diffusion mask processing, the large panel green laser for each waveguide group normal to the surface. For
was separated into the four similarly sized sub-panels Q1…4. drilling the glass panels we selected an EDGEWAVE solid state
Therefore the aluminum layer has two separation traces, one laser (Nd:YVO4) with optical output power of 20 W in
central vertical and the other one central horizontal located for combination with an optical galvo scanning system for
laser-cutting. For glass separation we used a MDI LD600-H cylindrical through glass via drilling. The laser beam is focused
system for the CO2-laser scribing of glass. Afterwards the glass on the glass panel backside and starts drilling from there by
waveguide panels were manually broken along the scribe moving the laser beam focus position continuously up to the
seams, resulting in high optical quality waveguide end facets. glass surface. The completely prepared glass waveguide panel
In principle, the panel separation could be automated, in a after waveguide integration and laser separation is shown in
process similar to that widely used for the separation of Liquid Fig. 10. In addition to the waveguide layout shown in the
Crystal Display (LCD) panels. Such a sub-panel with area of schematics, it also contains other features such as alignment
(220 x 285) mm² is shown in Fig. 9. marks, guiding hole structures and partner company logos.

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JLT-18585-2015.R1 5

Fig. 10. Appearance of graded index (GI) glass panel after planar waveguide
integration and laser separation to panel size of (143 x 190) mm².

Two different process parameter sets (set 1 and set 7) for ion-
exchange have been applied with a difference in diffusion time Fig. 11. Refractive index profile of waveguides with parameter set 1.
and silver salt melt concentration. The resulting panels
fabricated with different process parameter sets differ in
waveguide dimension, NA and distance of the maximum
refractive index point from the glass surface, which will have
an impact on coupling efficiencies for waveguide-to-fiber and
fiber-to-waveguide assembly and propagation losses of
waveguides. These variations were investigated by
characterizing the waveguide panels in terms of refractive index
profiles, propagation losses, coupling losses and misalignment
tolerances.
C. Experimental results
The refractive near field (RNF) scans were conducted for both
sets of waveguides to find out respective refractive index
profiles. Fig. 11 shows the refractive index profile of set 1 and
Fig. 12 the profile for set 7. For the case of waveguides
fabricated according to parameter set 1, the maximum refractive Fig. 12. Refractive index profile of waveguides with parameter set 7.
index point resides at a depth of around 15 µm under the glass
surface, whereas, for those waveguides fabricated according to The reproducibility of the glass waveguide process is verified
parameter set 7, it reside at a depth of 30 µm. The refractive by insertion loss measurements on all waveguides on 16
index difference between core center and cladding is 0.025 for different panels with in total 1536 waveguide channels. The
set 1 and 0.029 for set 7 with corresponding NA´s of 0.27 and launch into the waveguide is provided by a graded-index
0.3 respectively. High NA reduces the additional bend loss of multimode fiber (GI-MMF) with 50 µm core diameter and
higher order modes – NA must be high for tight waveguide NA=0.20, excited through a mode conditioner to produce an
bends here down to 25mm. From Fig. 11 it is quite clear that encircled flux profile compliant with IEC 61280-4-1. The
the waveguides fabricated by set 7 have larger dimensions output of the waveguide is collected by a large-core step-index
compared to waveguides fabricated by set 1 because of multimode fiber (SI-MMF) with 200 µm core diameter and
increased diffusion process time and change in silver salt melt NA=0.39 which collects the entire output of the waveguide for
concentration. Waveguide dimensions can be controlled by pass-check after fabrication. A 5-µm air gap is present between
process parameters like time, temperature, mask opening width fiber and waveguide, at both input and output. At 1310 nm
and salt melt concentration during the ion-exchange process wavelength, the insertion loss values varied between different
steps. waveguide groups because of length and radius of curvature
diversity. The measurement results are plotted in Fig. 13 for 16
different panels (1Q1 to 4Q4). Each bar represents the average
insertion loss of one waveguide group of 12 channels. In
summary, most of the waveguides exhibit insertion losses well
below 1 dB.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JLT.2016.2529651, Journal of
Lightwave Technology
JLT-18585-2015.R1 6

3,0
packages were aligned to each other with a PCB specific pinlam
1Q1 method during the stack-up process.
1Q2
2,5 1Q3
1Q4
Insertion loss [dB]

2,0 2Q1
2Q2
2Q3
1,5 2Q4
3Q1
1,0 3Q2
3Q3
0,5 3Q4
4Q1
4Q2
0,0 4Q3
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 4Q4
Waveguide group number
Fig. 13. Characterization of 16 different glass waveguide panels at wavelength
of 1310 nm. The loss is higher for smaller waveguide group numbers because
of increased waveguide length

IV. EOCB BACKPLANE FABRICATION

Fraunhofer IZM/TU Berlin successfully fabricated different
sets of multimode glass waveguide panels with aluminum
fiducials for alignment and laser cut end-faces for light
coupling. After pass-test all good panels were delivered to
ILFA GmbH for EOCB fabrication. ILFA GmbH successfully
developed a generic EOCB process in which different
application specific optical and electrical packages were
fabricated by applying standard PCB process routines in
industrial environment. The different packages were stacked
according to the final system demands in symmetrical or mixed
stack-up configurations. This unique process benefits from a
low temperature lamination technique with low built-in stress
while combining materials with different coefficients of
thermal expansion (CTE) like FR4, copper and glass.
In this work an EOCB with four glass waveguide panels in the
center and covered with FR4 and copper layers were fabricated.
The glass panels with individual thicknesses of 550 µm and
areas of (143 x 190) mm² were inlayed in an FR4 frame having
a large cut-out. In parallel, intermediate layers made of two
Fig. 14. Stack-up of the EOCB with four embedded glass waveguide panels in
adhesive foils and one FR4 layer were prepared. The optical the same layer. The numbers on the left are the layer thickness in micrometer.
packages are fabricated by laminating the FR4 layers with
adhesion foils to the glass core and surrounding FR4 frame with The EOCB backplane is fully functional and demonstrates the
a novel cold lamination technology, as shown in Fig. 14. The integration of four glasses within one stack-up as shown in Fig.
glass is visually aligned to the FR4 layers by utilizing the 15. The glasses are completely intact and have no built-in
fiducials on the glass surface and on the FR4 frame and the FR4 tensions. The logos of the partners patterned on the top glass
layers are passively aligned by pins to each other – “pinlam panel are visible through cut-outs in the electrical packages.
method”. Separating the EOCB backplane into electrical and optical
The electrical packages were processed separately by via packages allows the electrical packages to be fabricated using
drilling, plating and electrical trace etching followed by standard PCB process technologies, allowing highly complex
lamination of FR4 layers. This process can be repeated multiple electrical functionality for customer specific demands to be
times for electrical multilayer stack-up fabrication and does not accommodated including blind- and buried VIAs, HDI-layouts
differ from standard PCB fabrication technologies. In that work and embedded components etc.
we simplified the electrical functionality and fabricated each
electrical package with one copper layer for power distribution.
By again utilizing the new cold lamination technology from the
optical package fabrication, the electrical packages are then
laminated by adhesive foils to the optical packages, resulting in
a final EOCB thickness of 4 mm. Optical and electrical

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JLT.2016.2529651, Journal of
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in TABLE II. For wavelength of 1310 nm the coupling loss is

lower for 50-200 MMF measurement arrangement because of
larger core diameter of detection fiber. For that test the lowest
value with only 0.25±0.06 could be achieved because of
excellent mode coupling between 50 µm core diameter GI-
MMF in larger waveguide dimensions of set 7 and also low loss
waveguide to 200 µm core diameter SI-MMF coupling. The
large diameter detection detects all light on the waveguide end-
facet without additional coupling loss. The results show that
larger portion of the coupling loss for coupling a 50-50 MMF
Fig. 15. Fabricated EOCB backplane with area of (350 x 465) mm².
setup occurs at the waveguide-to-fiber interface with a coupling
loss of around 1.6 dB for set 7.

TABLE II
V. GLASS WAVEGUIDE TERMINATION COMBINED COUPLING LOSS FOR TWO DIFFERENT GLASS
WAVEGUIDES
A. Coupling and misalignment loss characterization Measurement Set 1 Set7
arrangement
The propagation loss and the coupling efficiency in dependence Coupling loss [dB] Coupling loss [dB]
to misalignment for the different waveguide sets have been 850nm 50-50 MMF 1.70±0.11 2.29±0.14
investigated to select proper coupling interfaces to parabolic
980nm 50-50 MMF 1.82±0.35 2.25±0.20
gradient-index multimode glass fibers. The insertion loss was
investigated on straight waveguides with 250 µm channel pitch 1310nm 50-50 MMF 2.14±0.20 1.87±0.10
and lengths of 250 mm and 235 mm for set 1 and set 7 1310nm 50-200 MMF 0.51±0.11 0.25±0.06
respectively and coupling losses evaluated through the cut-back
method. The characterization was done with 4 different
Misalignment in the butt-coupled fiber to the waveguide
measurement arrangements with signals of 850 nm, 980 nm and
arrangement results in decreased coupling efficiency. The
1310 nm wavelength. Lasers were fiber coupled by 50/125 GI-
variations in tolerances in terms of displacement direction and
MMF with NA=0.2 to a modal conversion system (Arden
waveguide difference between set 1 and set 7 are depicted in
Photonics ModCon) and then coupled to the glass waveguides
TABLE III.
with defined 5 µm air interface. On the opposite glass
waveguide end the light was captured with a 50 µm diameter
TABLE III
core gradient-index or 200 µm step-index diameter core MISALIGNMENT TOLERANCE FOR SET 1 AND 7; ADDITIONAL LOSS
multimode fiber connected to a photodetector. For the cut-back IN DB FOR VERTICAL MISALIGNMENT IN DIRECTION OF THE
method, insertion loss measurements were carried out on BULK GLASS V (+), IN DIRECTION OF GLASS SURFACE V (-), IN
straight waveguide panels at 4 different lengths by cutting away HORIZONTAL DIRECTION H
30 mm after every measurement. All fibers were actively Disp. Set 1 Set7
aligned to find the best position for insertion loss minimum. The [µm]
Additional coupling loss Additional coupling loss
cut-back characterization results are summarized in TABLE I. [dB] [dB]
Our investigations show a dependency of propagation loss on V (+) V (-) H V (+) V (-) H
different waveguide properties between waveguides of set 1
10 1.1 1.7 1.0 0.9 0.9 0.3
and set 7 because of differences in waveguide properties as
described above. The data marked with an asterisk is considered 20 4.2 4.8 3.2 2.9 3.4 1.6
anomalous and is expected to be lower. 30 9.4 8.5 7.0 7.4 5.5 3.5
40 22.2 19.7 12.6 16.2 10.0 6.2
50 46.8 30.0 19.5 36.0 13.7 11.5
TABLE I
PROPAGATION LOSS FOR TWO DIFFERENT GLASS WAVEGUIDES
Measurement Set 1 Set7 The elliptical refractive index profile properties of the ion-
arrangement exchanged waveguides show different excess loss dependent on
Propagation loss Propagation loss
[dB/cm] [dB/cm] direction of misalignment. The investigations were carried out
850nm 50-50 MMF 0.10±0.01 0.05±0.01 on the output side of the waveguides for waveguide-to-fiber
coupling. Similar results have been observed for fiber-to-
980nm 50-50 MMF 0.08±0.02 0.04±0.01 waveguide misalignment. The characterization was performed
1310nm 50-50 MMF 0.04±0.01 0.04±0.01 with a 50/125 GI-MMF with NA=0.2 at 1310 nm. For set 1
1310nm 50-200 MMF 0.06±0.01* 0.03±0.00 waveguides, 10 µm of displacement results in 1 dB excess loss
in the horizontal axis, while the same misalignment in the
vertical axis adds around 1.7 dB of coupling attenuation. For
set 7 the numbers are 0.3 dB and 0.9 dB for the horizontal and
The coupling loss for the different measurement arrangements
the vertical misalignment of 10 µm respectively. Because of
could be observed by the cut-back method and results are given

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larger dimensions of set 7 waveguides the excess loss is lower fiber cable and 12 channel waveguide array. Central to the
compared to set 1 waveguides. For higher displacements, the process was the 5-axis pick-and-place assembly equipment by
variations are even more prominent for set 7 than set 1 and also ficonTEC with three translational and two rotational axes with
for different axes. For example, a 20 µm misalignment in a positional accuracy better than ±1 µm [14].
vertical direction results in 4.8 dB of additional loss for set 1,
which is around 3.4 dB for set 7. Same amount of misalignment
in horizontal direction results in 3.2 dB for set 1 and not more
than 1.5 dB for set 7.

B. Pluggable MT ferrule receptacle fiber-flex interface

A precision connector receptacle Fig. 16a was designed by
Seagate to be directly assembled onto the edge of the glass
panel over the waveguide array interface (Fig. 16b). The
receptacle was fabricated through a precision machining
process in a polycarbonate material, which is light-transmissive
in the UV spectrum so as not to block curing radiation required
as part of the assembly process. The receptacles can be mounted
directly adjacent to each other as shown in Fig. 16c to achieve
a maximum fiber-to-board connector density.

Fig. 17. a) Interface dimensions of 6 x 12 (72 way) MT ferrule, b) fiber ferrule

designed to provide an offset between alignment pin datum and waveguide
array exactly matching offset between MT slot datum and lowest fiber row.

Ferrule receptacles have been successfully assembled enabling

fiber-to-board connectivity as shown in Fig. 18a and Fig. 18b.
Fig. 18c shows a bottom view of a 6 x 12 MT ferrule connected
to the ferrule receptacle with the MT pins shown fully engaged
within the compliant slots in the ferrule receptacle.
Fig. 16. a) MT fiber ferrule receptacle, b) embedded optical glass waveguide
array interface, c) multimode glass waveguide array with MT ferrule receptacle
mounted onto glass.

In order to avoid cutting notches into the glass panel on either

side of the waveguide array, the receptacle will need to
accommodate an offset between the alignment pins and the
waveguide array, which can be matched by a commercial fiber
connector. This requirement can be satisfied by designing the
ferrule to accommodate a commercial 6 x 12 MT ferrule (Fig.
17a). When the ferrule receptacle is placed on the top surface
of the glass panel, the datum between the alignment pins of the
connecting ferrule must be vertically offset from the embedded
waveguide array as shown in Fig. 17b. This offset must be 625
µm, in order to match the offset in a 6 x 12 MT fiber interface
between the datum between the alignment pins and the lowest
possible row of the 6 row MT ferrule populating the lowest row
of a standard 6 row (72 way) MT ferrule, plugged into the
Fig. 18. a) Schematic image of MT ferrule plugging into a surface mounted
receptacle. ferrule receptacle, b) photo of MT ferrule plugged into a surface mounted
Assembly of MT fiber ferrule receptacles onto the waveguide ferrule, c) Bottom view of MT ferrule fully engaged in ferrule receptacle.
interface was carried out by Fraunhofer IZM using an active
alignment and assembly routine to decrease misalignment and
optimize coupling efficiency between the 6 x 12 MT terminated

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C. Permanent adhesive bonded fiber-flex interface The processes of structuring and cutting of the glass wafers
A novel flex-ridge waveguide interface has been developed to were carried out using a MDI LD600-H system that contains a
enable parallel optical fiber cables to be directly connected to green short pulse laser and a CO2 laser. With the green laser
the embedded waveguide in a butt-coupled arrangement. This (532 nm) it is possible to process glass in multiple ways by
interface does not require any active aligning, therefore, fast ablation. Holes of various sizes, thicknesses and even with
and high volume assembly is possible. It mainly contains a glass different flexible shapes can be structured using this driller. The
chip with fiber guiding V-grooves holding an array of 12 fibers green laser parameters were first optimized to achieve high
in position. The whole assembly can then be mounted onto the accuracy and maximum yield and then the guide holes are
glass waveguide panel using guiding pins that can be structured. The parameters related to this process are laser
incorporated in the guide holes present both in the glass chip as current, pulse frequency, speed, modulation speed, inclination
well as in the waveguide panel. High CTE glass (Schott and wobble radius. A rectangular structure is also formed
D263Teco) is preferred instead of silicon for CTE matching to during this step to facilitate the fiber front edge alignment as
the glass waveguide panel. Other advantages are the well as to assist the application of adhesive between the fibers
transparency for UV adhesive curing, laser drilling and low cost and the embedded waveguides. The structuring of glass chips
V-groove dicing of glass compared to silicon. The embedded from the glass wafer was done by CO2 laser scribing and
waveguides and fibers are thus aligned in the horizontal axes breaking with the separated chips shown in Fig. 21.
utilizing this passive alignment technique. The vertical axis on
the other hand is aligned by bringing the glass surfaces of the
chip and the panel into physical contact. The depth of the V-
grooves in the glass chip is adapted according to the orientation
of the buried glass waveguides.

Fig. 21. (a)Fabricated glass chips on 200mm wafer-level after separation (b)
Fig. 19. Flex-ridge waveguide interface design. and single glass chip with grooves, cut-out and two alignment holes.

The fabrication process of this interface starts with forming of The fiber array to be assembled on the glass chip was custom
V-groove arrays containing twelve grooves each into a 500 µm manufactured for this process. These fiber arrays contain twelve
thick glass wafer. This was achieved by depth controlled wafer 50µm/125µm fibers (NA=0.20) each, having a separation
sawing (triangular blade shape) to realize the V-groove arrays between the centers of the core of 250µm. One side of the fiber
as shown in Fig. 20. In the same processing step four single V- array was free while the other side was terminated with an MT
groove lines (two horizontal and two vertical) were also formed connector. It was prepared by stripping and cleaving, which
making four crossing points which were used for alignment provides the required length of unjacketed fiber and optical
purposes in post-processing. quality facet respectively. The prepared fiber arrays were then
placed into the v-grooves and fixed with UV cured adhesive.
This assembly process was skillfully maneuvered to ensure
precise positioning of each fiber of the array.

Fig. 22. Fabricated flex-ridge waveguide interface.

To determine the performance, the insertion loss for waveguide

arrays was first measured with active alignment of fibers
mounted on motorized translational stages. The flex ridge
waveguide interfaces were then also assembled onto those
Fig. 20. Glass wafer containing 4x12 V-groove arrays and 4x1 V-grooves for
waveguide arrays using guide pins (Fig. 23) and fixed with a
creating crosses as alignment markers.

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minimal amount of adhesive. Adhesive was also applied 9

between fibers and embedded waveguides to fix their positions
and also as index matching liquid to avoid air gap between fiber 8

and waveguide. 7

INSERTION LOSS (dB)

5

4
2,763
2,757 2,358
3 1,849 1,802
0,038 -0,168 0,971 0,898
2 0,013 0,488
0,637
1

0
Blue Orange Green Brown Slate White Red Black Yellow Violet Rose Aqua
FIBER

Fig. 25. Insertion loss comparison between active alignment (red) and passive
aligned (blue) interface where the values depict the difference between them.
Fig. 23. Flex ridge waveguide interface assembly on glass waveguide panel.
Rigorous investigation of the fabrication processes suggests
The insertion loss for this passively aligned assembly was
that the performance of the interfaces can be further improved
measured with a setup depicted in Fig. 24. These values were
by using higher quality V-groove structures that are available
then compared with the previous measurements to analyze the
commercially. This will eventually mitigate the difference
feasibility of the interfaces.
between active and passive alignment for this interface to
minimum.
D. EOCB backplane demonstrator with fiber-flex interface
The complete optical link (MT→50/125 GI-MMF→glass
waveguide→50/125 GI-MMF→MT) made of the fabricated
EOCB backplane and permanent adhesive bonded fiber-flex
interfaces was configured to demonstrate the workability of the
system, similar to the Pluggable MT ferrule receptacle fiber-
flex interface of previous work [14]. The fabricated EOCB
backplane with area of (700 x 465) mm² containing four glass
panels of (143 x 190) mm² was used as the demonstrator
platform and fiber-flex interfaces were mounted and fixed using
adhesives on both input and output sides of the panels.

Fig. 24. Insertion loss measurement schematics for flex-ridge interface

assembled on one side.

As can be seen from Fig. 25, there are no significant differences

in insertion loss between the actively aligned and passively
aligned interfaces. For some channels both produce the same
outcome. The average excess loss of 1.20 dB was calculated for
this waveguide array. Comparing this value with the
misalignment tolerance data (TABLE III), we can approximate
a misalignment of 10 µm for the interface. Of course the amount
Fig. 26. a) EOCB backplane demonstrator with adhesive bonded fiber flex
of misalignment is an estimated value as it is difficult to interface and b) magnified view of the adhesive bonded fiber flex interface.
pinpoint because the misalignment could be in horizontal,
vertical or even both directions. The active alignment and the After that insertion losses for the whole connection were
misalignment study was performed without applying index measured. For the array with lowest insertion loss the
matching between fiber and waveguide interface. measurements of all the channels are presented in Fig. 25. In
calculating the average loss we excluded 3 anomalously high

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loss points, which were traced back to broken fibers on the nm. Passive alignment of pluggable MT ferrule receptacle
interface. assemblies will be further developed in ongoing work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TABLE IV Some of the research leading to these results has received
INSERTION LOSS FOR ALL THE 12 CHANNELS OF WG7 WITH
PERMANENT ADHESIVE BONDED FIBER-FLEX INTERFACES funding from German Ministry of Education and Research
MOUNTED ON BOTH SIDES. THE DATA POINTS MARKED WITH AN (BMBF). The authors would like to thank all the colleagues
ASTERISK ARE CONSIDERED ANOMALOUS AND THE AVERAGE who have supported this work. Special thanks go to K. Wang,
DOES NOT INCLUDE THOSE POINTS
A. Miller, P. Stevens, C. Herbst, A. Miller, M. Neitz and J.
Röder.
Fiber ID Insertion Loss [dB]
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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JLT.2016.2529651, Journal of
Lightwave Technology
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[18] H. Baghsiahi, K. Wang, W. Kandulski, R. Pitwon, and D. Selviah, “Op- is currently a Group Manager of the Optical Interconnection
tical waveguide end facet roughness and optical coupling loss,” Journal
Technologies Group, Department of System Integration &
of Lightwave Technology, vol. 31, no. 16, pp. 2659–2668, 2013.
[19] R. M. Dorward, K. Symington, L. Brusberg, J.-R. Kropp, A. Miller, R. Interconnection Technologies, Fraunhofer Institute for
Pitwon, and S. Whalley, “Market drivers and architectural requirements Reliability and Microintegration (IZM), Berlin. His main fields
for backplane inter-connect capacities in Next Generation PON Head- are R&D of optical interconnection technologies for printed
End equipment in the Access Network,” in Proc. ICTON, 2013, pp. 1-4.
circuit boards and photonic modules. He holds a lot of patents
in photonic packaging technologies. He is a Member of the
Lars Brusberg received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in German Physical Society, the German Society of Applied
electrical engineering from the Technical University of Berlin, Optics, and the European Optical Society.
Berlin, Germany, in 2008 and 2012, respectively. He is
currently working as Senior Research Scientist at the
Department of System Integration & Interconnection
Technologies, Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and
Microintegration (IZM), Berlin. His research and development
interests focus on design and fabrication of optical glass
waveguide panels and electro-optical circuit boards.

Simon Whalley was born in Rinteln, Germany, in 1983. He

received the Diplom-Ingenieur degree in electrical engineering
from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hannover,
Hannover, Germany, in 2011. From 2003 to 2004, he fulfilled
his military duty at the School of Army Aviation based at
Bückeburg, Germany. He started as a student trainee in the field
of quality assurance at ILFA Feinstleitertechnik GmbH,
Germany, in 2010, and since 2012, he has been an Engineering
Project Manager with research interests including glass
substrate und electronic component embedding technologies.
More recently he has been overseeing electro-optical PCB
production at ILFA for different research projects including
SEPIANet and LEOCB. He is a Member of the Association of
German Engineers (VDI).

Richard Charles Alexander Pitwon received the B.Sc.

(Hons.) degree in physics and M.Sc. degree in computer science
from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, U.K. He has more
than 15 years experience in the design and development of high-
speed photonic interconnect technologies for data storage and
communication systems including passive and active optical
connectors, optical printed circuit boards, optical interconnect
interfaces, and transceivers. He currently leads the photonics
research and development group at Seagate Systems, U.K. He
holds 40 patents in the field of embedded optical interconnect
and has authored numerous publications. He is a Chartered
Engineer and serves as the secretary of the International
Electrotechnical Commission standards group for optical
circuit board technologies.

Fahd Rushd Faridi received his B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in

Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Islamic University
of Technology, Bangladesh. He is pursuing his M.Sc. in ‘Optics
and Photonics’ at Karlsruhe Institute für Technologie,
Karlsruhe. Currently he is working on his master thesis at the
Department of System Integration & Interconnection
Technologies, Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and
Microintegration (IZM), Berlin.

Henning Schröder was born in 1967. He received the M.Sc.

degree in applied physics from the University of Magdeburg,
Magdeburg, Germany, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree at the
Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany, in 2000. He

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