H. S. Rezaei
G. Hohenhoff
P. Jäschke
S. Kaierle
L. Overmeyer

Design and fabrication of multilayer GRIN lenses by multi-material additive manufacturing for light coupling applications in planar optoelectronic systems

SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11283: Integrated Optics: Devices, Materials, and Technologies XXIV
112831K
2020
Type: Zeitschriftenaufsatz (non-reviewed)
Abstract
Planar optoelectronic systems lay the foundation for many applications. Such systems benefit from the advantages of optical communication such as high data bandwidth coupled with customized mechanical properties for the desired application. Despite the potential advantages of such systems, their integration is underdeveloped, impeding their mass production. There have been studies investigating the possibility of integrating all units of an optoelectronic system on a substrate, including printing optical waveguides and integrating the laser diode on flexible substrate foils. Nevertheless, the fabrication of integrated optoelectronic systems is still immature. One of the missing units is integrated light coupler. This work proposes the fabrication of multilayer GRIN lenses through additive manufacturing of photopolymers. Additive manufacturing techniques accompanied with optical photopolymers facilitate the integration of the light coupling structure in the system. In the proposed lens structure, layers with different refractive indices are stacked through multi-material aerosol jet printing. In this process, two photopolymer liquids are used as source materials in aerosol jet system, whose mixing ratios tune the refractive indices of the layers. A beam profiler assesses the optical behavior of the light coupling structure. The beam profilometry results confirm the coupling functionality of the fabricated GRIN lens.