Optical Characteristics and Reliability of 16-Fiber Fiber Physical Contact Connector with Zirconia Ceramic Micro-Hole Array

Yoshiteru ABE
Masaru KOBAYASHI
Ryo NAGASE

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics   Vol.E88-C    No.8    pp.1546-1551
Publication Date: 2005/08/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 10.1093/ietele/e88-c.8.1546
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Recent Development of Electro-Mechanical Devices--Selected Papers from International Session on Electro-Mechanical Devices 2004 (IS-EMD2004)--)
Category: Optical Interconnection
Keyword: 
optical connector,  optical fiber,  FPC connector,  MU connector,  

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Summary: 
Optical connectors for printed circuit board interfaces are required for the implementation of reliable high-density multi-fiber connection. We developed a 16-fiber fiber physical contact (FPC) connector with an MU connector coupling mechanism and a compact shutter to meet this requirement. In the FPC connector, two arrays of fibers are aligned in micro-holes without ferrules. A micro-hole array is a key component as regards the optical characteristics of the FPC connector. We developed a 16-ch micro-hole array composed of injection molded zirconia ceramics. The 16-fiber FPC connectors with a zirconia ceramic micro-hole array had an insertion loss of less than 0.3 dB with an average value of 0.07 dB and a return loss of over 45 dB. The optical characteristics remained stable in environmental and mechanical tests.