Optical link utilizing polymer optical waveguides: application in multimedia device

For realizing high speed and slim data link in a multimedia device, we have developed a compact and highly flexible optical link module utilizing a polymer optical waveguide. With this module, 1.25Gbps high speed data transmission has been successfully demonstrated. This module has a transmitter and a receiver and those are compactly packaged on the each end of a film optical waveguide in order to provide easy electrical connection to board. This electric connection configuration achieves more compact connector to the electric circuit board than the conventional configuration based on the connection with optical connector. For the flexible optical link module, the highly bendable polymer film optical waveguide has been developed by utilizing the unique replication technology. The propagation loss of the optical waveguide is 0.07dB/cm at 850nm. And the bending loss is <0.2dB after 1million cycles at the bending radius 1mm. These performances promises the practical application of the board to board data link through hinge of multimedia device.