Direct ink writing 3D-printed optical waveguides for multi-layer interconnect

Abstract

Low-cost, short-range optical interconnect technology plays an indispensable role in high-speed board-level data communications. In general, 3D printing technology can easily and quickly produce optical components with free-form shapes, while the traditional manufacturing process is complicated and time-consuming. Here, we present a direct ink writing 3D-printing technology to fabricate optical waveguides for optical interconnects. The waveguide core is 3D printed optical polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) polymer, with propagation loss of 0.21 dB/cm at 980 nm, 0.42 dB/cm at 1310 nm, and 1.08 dB/cm at 1550 nm, respectively. Furthermore, a high-density multilayer waveguide arrays, including a four-layer waveguide arrays with a total of 144 waveguide channels, is demonstrated. Error-free data transmission at 30 Gb/s is achieved for each waveguide channel, indicating that the printing method can produce optical waveguides with excellent optical transmission performance. We believe this simple, low-cost, highly flexible, and environmentally friendly method has great potential for high-speed short-range optical interconnects.