Novel Techniques for Low‐cost, High Performance, Optoelectronic Component Assembly Available to Purchase

The drive towards low unit cost in optoelectronics packaging is assisted by simple, rapid assembly processes, and by avoiding the need for hermeticity. This paper discusses the use of visible blue‐light cured resins as an important issue in assembly techniques. Results are also reported on trials of silicone gels as a means to produce hermetic equivalence performance in optoelectronic (O‐E) components and associated electronics. Photodiodes coated in these gels could be expected to have a service life of >60 years and results for coated lasers are encouraging with degradations of 4%/1000 h of damp heat stress, while GaAs ICs showed no degradation. The potential of these technologies has made possible the fabrication of a simple photodiode mount with coupling efficiencies approaching 100%. Low cost laser assembly has also been investigated. To demonstrate the feasibility of these technologies an O‐E transceiver module has been produced.