The main focus of this Diploma Thesis is the fabrication and characterisation of multimode polymer waveguides for use in optical high-speed printed circuit boards. The waveguides will be laminated as different layers into printed circuit boards. The work reported in this Diploma Thesis was performed in the Photonics Group of the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Ruschlikon (Switzerland).It is a part of a research project aimed at the development of optical waveguides for high-speed data communication in server systems and processor cards. A first target of IBM is to demonstrate transmission rates of up to 12.5 Gbit/s per channel, with the aim of enabling the integration of optical links into the production of standard printed circuit boards.

In this Thesis polymer-based multimode waveguides were built using various production processes. This resulted in the following problem definition:

• Characterisation and optimisation of the various production processes
• Comparison of the production processes used
• Waveguide optimisation in terms of dimensional and structural accuracy and in terms of propagation losses.
• Reliability testing

The experience gained hereby will be applied to improve the various process steps in manufacturing of polymer-based multimode waveguides. As a result the waveguides propagation losses decrease.