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The paper compares the results of panel- and wafer-level processing of display glass integrated single mode optical waveguides. The comparison is based on measurements of the same optical structures processed using panel- and waferlevel technology. Additionally, large panels of 440 mm x 305 mm where manufactured to prove the scalability of the single-mode process. Measurements are done by optical back scattering reflectometry using a Luna OBR 4600 and a fiber-based propagation loss measurement setup. Based on these results of diverse processing equipment and substrate dimensions, a comprehensive statistic is shown and error estimation made to compare the different technologies.

A glass optical waveguide process has been developed for fabrication of electro-optical circuit boards (EOCB). Very thin glass panels with planar integrated single-mode waveguides can be embedded as a core layer in printed circuit boards for high-speed board-level chip-to-chip and board-to-board optical interconnects over an optical backplane. Such singlemode EOCBs will be needed in upcoming high performance computers and data storage network environments in case single-mode operating silicon photonic ICs generate high-bandwidth signals [1]. The paper will describe some project results of the ongoing PhoxTroT project, in which a development of glass based single-mode on-board and board-to-board interconnection platform is successfully in progress. The optical design comprises a 500 μm thin glass panel (Schott D263Teco) with purely optical layers for single-mode glass waveguides. The board size is accommodated to the mask size limitations of the fabrication (200 mm wafer level process, being later transferred also to larger panel size). Our concept consists of directly assembling of silicon photonic ICs on cut-out areas in glass-based optical waveguide panels. A part of the electrical wiring is patterned by thin film technology directly on the glass wafer surface. A coupling element will be assembled on bottom side of the glass-based waveguide panel for 3D coupling between board-level glass waveguides and chip-level silicon waveguides. The laminate has a defined window for direct glass access for assembling of the photonic integrated circuit chip and optical coupling element. The paper describes the design, fabrication and characterization of glass-based electro-optical circuit board with format of (228 x 305) mm 2 .

Optical interconnects for data transmission at board level offer increased energy efficiency, system density, and bandwidth scalability compared to purely copper driven systems. We present recent results on manufacturing of electrooptical printed circuit board (PCB) with integrated planar glass waveguides. The graded index multi-mode waveguides are patterned inside commercially available thin-glass panels by performing a specific ion-exchange process. The glass waveguide panel is embedded within the layer stack-up of a PCB using proven industrial processes. This paper describes the design, manufacture, assembly and characterization of the first electro-optical backplane demonstrator based on integrated planar glass waveguides. The electro-optical backplane in question is created by laminating the glass waveguide panel into a conventional multi-layer electronic printed circuit board stack-up. High precision ferrule mounts are automatically assembled, which will enable MT compliant connectors to be plugged accurately to the embedded waveguide interfaces on the glass panel edges. The demonstration platform comprises a standardized sub-rack chassis and five pluggable test cards each housing optical engines and pluggable optical connectors. The test cards support a variety of different data interfaces and can support data rates of up to 32 Gb/s per channel.

As manmade space debris in the low earth orbit becomes an increasing risk to space missions, which could even result in total mission loss, it has become even more critical to have detailed knowledge of the properties of these particles like the mass, the velocity and the trajectory. In this paper, we present a newly designed, highly sensitive impact detector array with 16 pixels for space debris analysis. The thermopile sensor array, which was developed in the project, consists of 16 miniaturized multi-junction thermopile sensors made by modern thin-film technology on Si wafers. Each thermopile sensor consists of 100 radially arranged junction pairs formed from evaporated antimony and bismuth thin films. The centrally located active (hot) junctions comprise the active area of 1 mm². The output e.m.f. of the sensor is proportional to the temperature difference between the active and the reference junctions. The thermopile requires no cooling and no bias voltage or current for operation. It generates no 1/f noise but only the thermal resistance (Nyquist) noise. The sensor can be used for DC and low frequency AC measurements. The impact energy of micro sized particles is measured by a calorimetric principle. This means that the kinetic energy of the particle is converted into heat by hitting the absorbing foil, which is glued on the surface of the membrane area. This setup in combination with a preceded velocity detector allows the measurement of the most interesting particle quantities mass, velocity and trajectory.