Dow Corning, IBM Scientists Develop New Materials for Board-Level Photonics

Recently at the Photonics West conference, Dow Corning and IBM scientists unveiled a major step in photonics, using a new type of polymer material to transmit light instead of electrical signals within supercomputers and data centers. This new silicone-based material offers better physical properties, including robustness and flexibility, making it ideal for applications in Big Data and for the development of future exascale computers, which are capable of performing a billion billion computations per second.

With exabytes of structured and unstructured data growing annually at 60%, scientists have been researching a range of technological advancements to drastically reduce the energy required to move all that data from the processor to the printed circuit board within a computer. Optical interconnect technology offers bandwidth and power efficiency advantages compared to established electrical signaling.

“Polymer waveguides provide an integrated means to route optical signals similar to how copper lines route electrical signals,” explains Dr. Bert Jan Offrein, manager of the Photonics Research Group at IBM Research. “Our design is highly flexible, resistant to high temperatures and has strong adhesion properties – these waveguides were designed with no compromises.”

In a collaboration with Dow Corning, the scientists for the first time fabricated thin sheets of optical waveguide that show no curling and can bend to a 1 mm radius and is stable at extreme operating conditions including 85% humidity and 85°C. This new polymer, based on silicone materials, offers an optimized combination of properties for integration in established electrical printed circuit board technology. In addition, the material can be fabricated into waveguides using conventional manufacturing techniques available today.