Our Motivation

The research field of integrated optics has become increasingly important in recent years and will continue to play a decisive role in various technological applications in the future. The possibility of integrating optical components and circuits on a single chip or platform opens up a multitude of perspectives for the development of more efficient and compact optical systems. Major advances can be expected in the fields of communication technology, sensor technology and image processing in particular.

Our Research

Figure 1 shows possible application scenarios for the use of a glass platform as an optical interposer. Individual fibres can be coupled to the platform via v-shaped grooves or directly in a fibre array. Pockets for discrete components can also be produced. In addition, conductor tracks or VIA (vertical interconnects access) for the electrical connection can be applied directly to the carrier substrate by means of sputtering. For example, evanescence couplers (a), Mach-Zender interferometers (b), ring resonators (c) or similar functional elements can be realised by suitably arranging the integrated optical waveguides.

An optical microplatform has been designed and manufactured in collaboration with various working groups, as shown in Figure 2. By integrating discrete components such as filters, laser diodes and photodiodes, the transmission and reflection behaviour at the filter can be manipulated in a very small installation space by tuning the transmission elements. This can be detected by the discrete receiver components.