Planar Waveguide Technology
The basis of the vario-optics’ electro-optical printed circuit board technology is the optical layer. It can be attached to the substrate as an outer-layer, or it can be integrated as inner-layer, depending on the needs of the customer. The photolithographic manufacturing approach enables the implementation of virtually any planar optical system with excellent characteristics at lowest costs:
- Dimensions: 5 µm x 5 µm up to 500 µm x 500 µm
- Singlemode and multimode waveguides
- splitter, combiner, coupler, taper, planar lenses
- highly integrated miniaturized photonic systems
- precise alignment features for cost effective assembly
- miniaturized interferometric structures
Light coupling
vario-optics light coupling technology provides you a very efficient and tolerant assembly process.
The required accuracy of the subsequent placement of the optical components is relatively low, which enables a cheap final assembly of the electro-optical components with conventional SMD pick & place machines.
We are capable of implementing butt-coupling or integrating of electro-optical components directly into the optical layer.
- lens-less butt coupling
- vertical coupling via light turning device
- evanescence field coupling (adiabatic)
Light coupling
Substrates
vario-optics has extensive experience with a large variety of substrates, e.g. FR4, RF-materials, glass, silica
Our optical materials are of such a nature that they can even be used on flexible materials (polyimid).
- Waveguide integration into electro-opticl circuit board with high layer counts
- Laminiation of planar waveguides into conventional PCB's
- multiple optical layers
- any material mix possible
Regular production runs with permanently improved quality control according to the standards for PCB production. For this, vario-optics ag has innstalled an excellent production infrastructure. The equipment is operated within a class 1’000 (ISO 6) clean-room.
Process Capabilities