High efficiency diffraction grating coupler for low cost optical interconnect

Janyce Franc (1) , Nathalie Destouches (1) , Danièle Blanc (1) , Jean-Claude Pommier (1) , Svetlen Tonchevb (2) , Geert van Steenberge (3) , Nina Hendrickx (3) , Arndt Last (4) , Olivier Parriaux (1)

1 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien
2 ISSP - Institut of the Solid State Physics
3 INTEC - INTEC/TFCG Microsystems Technologiepark
4 IMT - Institute for Microstructure Technology

The original device presented in this paper is designed for coupling a free space optical wave under quasi-normal incidence in- and out of- a highly multimode waveguide with minimum losses. It uses two resonant diffraction gratings at the substrate-waveguide interface that are made of a shallow metal grating, covered with a high refractive index layer. It is shown that the resonant structure can theoretically diffract up to 90 % of the incident energy in and out of the waveguiding layer. The geometrical parameters of the structure and the tolerances can easily be achieved by conventional technology means.

Keywords: micro-optics; optical interconnect; multimode waveguide; grating coupler

Domains: Physics [physics]; Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Materials Science [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Janyce Franc, Nathalie Destouches, Danièle Blanc, Jean-Claude Pommier, Svetlen Tonchevb, et al.. High efficiency diffraction grating coupler for low cost optical interconnect. 2006. ⟨ujm-00110870⟩