System-level integration of silicon photonics based on scalable optical coupling using polymer waveguides

We report on the optimization of a scalable optical interfacing approach for silicon photonics based on adiabatic optical coupling between tapered silicon waveguides and singlemode polymer waveguides. Different taper-designs and assembly methods were investigated to minimize the coupling loss for both polarizations. We could demonstrate very low coupling losses per interface down to < 1.0 dB for TE and < 0.5 dB for TM across the entire O-band. Moreover, first TE-measurements in the C-band with the same assembly and design showed even lower coupling losses below 0.5 dB.©OSA 2016.