| Abstract | Our developed thermal curing adhesives were reported having excellent performance in coupling optical fibers to waveguides. The fiber-to-waveguide coupling process based on these adhesives was reported in this paper. The process consisted of three major steps in the process, including loading waveguide dies and fiber arrays onto the sample holders, aligning the fibers to waveguides at a constant temperature to reach minimum loss, bonding the fiber arrays to waveguide dies. The sample holders, which used ceramic spaces to isolate heat and springs to damp stress, were specially designed to keep fiber arrays and waveguide dies at a constant temperature up to 120°C with minimum shift. When the fiber arrays and waveguide dies were equilibrated with the set temperature, a rough alignment was conducted manually, followed by an automatic alignment controlled by a Melles Griot system. Then, the adhesives with proper viscosity and curing rate were applied to the gaps between fiber array and waveguide dies to bond them together. The curing temperature was optimized by studying the adhesives’ curing kinetics with a DSC, so that the adhesives could be distributed rapidly and cured at a speed that still allowed a small alignment adjustment during the curing. A post-thermal treatment process was developed to build the maximum bonding strength for the fiber-coupled devices. |
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