Surface Mount Technology for Silica-Based Planar Lightwave Circuit and Its Application to Compact 16×16 Multicast Switch

Ai YANAGIHARA  Keita YAMAGUCHI  Takashi GOH  Kenya SUZUKI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics   Vol.E103-C   No.11   pp.679-684
Publication Date: 2020/11/01
Publicized: 2020/06/05
Online ISSN: 1745-1353
DOI: 10.1587/transele.2019OCP0008
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Opto-electronics and Communications for Future Optical Network)
Category: 
Keyword: 
optical switch,  planar lightwave circuit (PLC),  solder,  surface mount technology (SMT),  

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Summary: 
We demonstrated a compact 16×16 multicast switch (MCS) made from a silica-based planar lightwave circuit (PLC). The switch utilizes a new electrical connection method based on surface mount technology (SMT). Five electrical connectors are soldered directly to the PLC by using the standard reflow process used for electrical devices. We reduced the chip size to half of one made with conventional wire bonding technology. We obtained satisfactory solder contacts and excellent switching properties. These results indicate that the proposed method is suitable for large-scale optical switches including MCSs, variable optical attenuators, dispersion compensators, and so on.