Optical Packaging of Surface-Normal Electroabsorption Modulator Arrays Using Passive Alignment

Surface-normal electroabsorption modulators (SNEAMs) are devices with unique characteristics, such as small size, wide bandwidth and polarization insensitive behavior; however, due to the surface-normal configuration and since they operate in reflection, it is challenging to package fiber arrays to SNEAM arrays with many channels. Here, we present a novel approach to package fiber arrays to SNEAM arrays based on passive alignment. We realize an expanded-beam, multi-channel, optical coupling scheme by using a prism lens array and a lens array in between a SNEAM array chip and a standard single mode fiber array. We use this approach to assemble a SNEAM array engine with 8 channels without any active optical alignment. We show that our SNEAM array engine has coupling loss from the fiber inputs to the SNEAMs ranging from 1.2 dB for the best channel to 1.7 dB for the worst channel. Also, we validate our passive alignment packaging scheme by modulating the channels at 25 Gbit/s NRZ-OOK and show that the fiber array is pluggable into the SNEAM array engine. Finally, our approach is independent of the specific SNEAM design, and potentially can be extended to other surface-normal devices, such as lasers or photodiodes.