Optical waveguides with embedded air-gap cladding integrated within a sea-of-leads (SoL) wafer-level package

Optical waveguides are integrated into a Sea-of-Leads (SoL) wafer-level package. A photosensitive polycarbonate composite is incorporated to provide a buried air-gap cladding that allows a refractive index contrast, /spl Delta/n, between waveguide core and cladding regions of /spl Delta/n = 0.52. The final package contains 1000 electrical input/output (I/O) interconnects and 32 large-area optical waveguides for electrical chip-to-chip and optical intra-chip clock or data interconnection, respectively. Monolithic fabrication of passive optical interconnect components is described.