Advanced manufacturing of plastic optical components

Manufacturing process based on thermoplastic molding allows the use of free-form optical surfaces. 

This new manufacturing process enables large scale production of high-quality optical components, using injection technologies able to embed the optics directly onto the optoelectronic components.

Current PIC manufacturing processes have several drawbacks that prevent efficient and sustainable growth: the required manufacturing time, positioning errors in optical components and associated manufacturing costs. Standard thermosetting polymer molding techniques used to encapsulate PIC primary optics include a lengthy curing stage (4-5 hours). This leads to production bottlenecks in terms of time, cost and energy consumption. In addition, to obtain the desired functionality, several optical components need to be used, and final performance depends on overall optical alignment, which is currently undertaken in independent steps. Manufacturing process based on thermoplastic molding allows the use of free-form optical surfaces that improve performance and efficiency due to smaller air-material interfaces. In addition, the component volume can be reduced.

Thermoplastic molding can be applied to produce components related to lighting (LEDs), communications (plastic optical fibers – POF) or a large variety of sensors that include light sources or detectors.