Multi-pigtailing using V-grooves and mechanical cleaving on the same InP substrate

A simple technique based on the monolithic integration on InP of waveguides and V-shaped grooves and on the use of a novel cantilever cleaving technology is reported for multifibre coupling. This technology is compatible with a low loss propagation photonic integrated circuit. The scheme allows a good control of cleaved facet position necessary to pigtail a set of fibres. Four 10 mm long waveguide samples have been fully pigtailed. A fibre to-fibre loss of 5.9 dB is measured at 1.5 /spl mu/m. The excess loss per facet is <1 ds.