<title>Plastic integrated optoelectronics</title>

Abstract

Advances in polymer and sol-gel derived hybrid materials have made possible to integrate optical structures including waveguides, sensors and structures used in passive alignment of optical devices on various type of substrates. Particular attention has been given to the fabrication of electro-optical printed circuit boards (EOPCB). Fundamental problems related to printed circuit boards (PCB) are the insufficient surface smoothness of common PCB substrate (FR4) and different coefficients of thermal expansion between the optical material and substrate. In order to resolve these problems sol-gel hybrid materials and cost effective spray-coating method are employed for the fabrication of optical structures on PCB. Surface roughness of the PCB's can be greatly reduced using additional layer under optical core material. This additional layer behaves also as an optical under-cladding layer. Optical properties of these used materials are determined and optical structures fabricated using these directly photopatternable materials are demonstrated.