A technology of co-packaged optics, which is mounting photonics integrated circuits and electronic integrated
circuits on the same board, is essential to meet the demands of high-capacity transmission in data centers. In this
respect, polymer optical waveguides have attracted much attention because of mechanical stability, excellent
processability, and compatibility with electronic circuits. To achieve high-capacity optical transmission, we are
developing a new package substrate, which we call active optical package (AOP) substrate, as a solution of co-packaged optics. The AOP substrate consists of a conventional organic package substrate such as glass-epoxy
substrates, on which silicon photonics dies are embedded and SMF connectors are mounted. In the AOP, the
silicon photonics inputs/outputs (I/Os) and the optical connectors are connected by 3D optical wiring technology
that has a function of converting the pitch size. The 3D optical wiring is realized with a pair of micro-mirrors and a
single-mode polymer waveguide.
First, we have evaluated the high-speed optical transmission performance of a single-mode polymer optical
waveguide for LAN-WDM network. We observed there was no noticeable penalty for optical transmission for all
LAN-WDM channels. And then, we demonstrate transmission of an AOP substrate comprising of silicon
waveguide, two micro-mirrors and polymer waveguide. Transmission of 112-Gb/s PAM4 optical signal was
performed without noticeable penalty up to 85 °C.