Packaging technologies for optoelectronics in the new millennium

Performance and cost demands on future optoelectronic components are likely to continue in the foreseeable future as fibre networks are increasingly deployed. To meet these demands, new materials and manufacturing methods need to evolve from components which are designed to be fully hermetic to meet the system reliability requirements or which require precision manual optical alignment as part of the manufacturing process. The advent of WDM systems and optical switching will also require packaging of multi-fibre (ribboned) components.