Digital fabrication of a small diameter polymer optical waveguide
AssigneeUniversity of South Florida
InventorsVenkat Rama Bhethanabotla, Thomas M. Weller, Roger Brandon Tipton, John Townsend Bentley, Eduardo Antonio Rojas
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Abstract
A novel polymer optical waveguide and method of manufacturing is presented herein. A digitally manufactured process is described which utilizes a micro-dispensed UV optical adhesive as the contour guiding cladding, a fused deposition modeling technology for creating a core, additional optical adhesive to complete the cladding and a subtractive laser process to finish the two ends of the optical interconnect.
Claims17
A method of digitally manufacturing a polymer optical waveguide comprising:
- micro-dispensing a first layer of ultraviolet light (UV) curable optical adhesive having a low refractive index into a guided channel base to form a cladding;
- using a fused deposition modeling additive manufacturing process to extrude a filament of a polymer having a higher refractive index than the refractive index of the cladding embedded into the guided channel base containing the first layer of optical adhesive to create a core;
- adding a second layer of optical adhesive to complete the cladding;
- and
- using a subtractive laser process to finish end facets of the polymer optical waveguide;
- wherein both the first and the second layer of optical adhesive have a thickness of at least 10% of core diameter.
A method of digitally manufacturing a polymer optical waveguide comprising:
- micro-dispensing an ultraviolet light (UV) curable optical adhesive having a low refractive index into a guided channel base to form a cladding;
- using a fused deposition modeling additive manufacturing process to extrude a filament of a polymer embedded into a center of the cladding to create a core having a higher refractive index than the refractive index of the cladding;
- and
- using a subtractive laser process to finish end facets of the polymer optical waveguide;
- wherein the core is embedded within the cladding;
- wherein thickness of the cladding is at least 10% of core diameter.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.