PROCESSING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF BENZOCYCLOBUTENE OPTICAL WAVE-GUIDES

Digital circuits are continuing to see an increase in clock speeds whi ch puts significant demands on the design and packaging of electronic subsystems, One possible solution is to take advantage of the high ban dwidth of optics, This has clearly taken place for long-distance telec ommunications, but has yet to happen at the board- or chip-level in el ectronic systems, While there are many reasons for this, one serious i ssue concerns the materials that are required to achieve optical signa l transmission in the electronic system, First and foremost, the mater ial must exhibit low optical loss, The material must also be compatibl e with the standard processing techniques of printed wiring boards, mu ltichip modules, or integrated circuits, In addition, the materials mu st be easily processed into the desired optical structures, In this pa per, we present our work on using benzocyclobutene as an optical waveg uide material, Benzocyclobutene is an advanced organic polymer that is ideally suited as a dielectric layer in high-speed digital circuits, We show that as a waveguide material, single-mode (1300 nm) optical wa veguides can be fabricated with losses of 0.81 dB/cm. Detailed process ing conditions are discussed,