Industrialization of PLC splitter chip technology

by Fiber-MART.COM

Fiber optic communication network has become the cornerstone of today’s world of information transfer. With the further development of the network and increasing market demand for communication bandwidth, the entire communication network at the part between the user’s last ten kilometers and last one kilometer are now using optical fiber. FTTH becomes an important direction of the development of fiber optic communication network.

 

Preparation of PLC Technology

FTTH mainly uses PON network technology, which requires a large number of low-cost optical splitters and other optical passive components. Optical splitter device is an integral part of FTTH network. And with the promotion of FTTH, there would be a greater market demand. The traditional preparation of optical splitter technology is fiber fused biconical taper (FBT) technology. Its characteristics are mature and simple technology. The disadvantage is that the assigned ones and the device size are too large, which caused the decrease in yield and the rising cost of single channel. Therefore, FBT technology based fiber optic splitter preparation techniques have been unable to adapt to the market demand. The following picture shows the FBT technology process.

 

Advent of PLC Technology

As you can see from the perspective of development of optical devices, PLC technology has become a mainstream technology for large-scale preparation of high-performance and low-cost optical splitter. It is the use of PLC technology by producing the optical splitter chip coupled with the optical fiber array package that completes the preparation of the optical splitter. Its features are small device size, low cost and good splitter uniformity. But at the same time, the technical threshold is relatively high, especially for the production of large optical splitters which are suitable for mass production. By analyzing of PLC technology, you can see that the glass-based PLC technology has great advantages in terms of equipment investment, production costs, the optimal choice of production required for FTTH and low-cost optical devices such as optical splitter.

 

Applications of PLC Technology in China

Internationally, PLC technology has been widely used in the miniaturization, high-performance optical device fabrication and production, and the optical splitter chip in particular. In China, however, the reality is that we have become a PLC encapsulation big country, but is limited to the optical splitter and optical device fabrication device coupled packaging and downstream industry chain having no PLC chip health line. And PLC core device chips are entirely dependent on imports. There is a problem that the core preparation technique of the PLC device lies in the outward, which has resulted in major cost control of the device and also led to the lack of technical support further to the high-end integrated chip development. This severely hinders the development of our country in the PLC application.

 

Manufacturing of PLC Splitter Chip

PLC splitter chip manufacturing process PECVD (plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition) and FHD (flame hydrolysis deposition) and ion exchange. The former two with the substrate material is a silicon-based silica, and the latter with the substrate material is glass. AWG (arrayed waveguide grating) chip production, silica optical waveguide splitter chips can be produced on silica on silicon waveguide or glass waveguide. Production by ion exchange glass waveguide PLC chip domestic number of colleges and universities have been conducting research and development. Technical appraisal sample has been reached the international advanced level of similar products. Further pilot research and development will be able to achieve your PLC splitter chip mass production. In fact, in addition to the production of optical splitter chip, glass-based PLC technology R & D production environment with a wide range of other potential applications, for example, can be applied to detect the required light sensor.

 

Common Types of PLC Splitter

Nowadays, many kinds of PLC splitters with optical splitter chips are on the market for different network connections. Bare fiber PLC splitter has no connector at the bare fiber ends. Blockless PLC splitter has a compact stainless tube package providing stronger fiber protection with terminated ends. ABS PLC splitter has a plastic ABS box to protect the PLC splitter. Other types like fanout splitter, tray type splitter, rack-mount splitter, LGX splitter and mini plug-in type splitter are also widely applied to the FTTH networks.

 

Conclusion

PLC splitter chip technology has greatly improved the implementation of FTTH network. fiber-mart.COM provides all kinds of PLC splitters listed above. If you are interested, please search our website for more detailed information.