ECTC BOILS OVER
There were many fine sessions at ECTC in Seattle. To give a flavor for the meeting, a brief summary of some of the presentations follows:
Session 5 "High Speed Optoelectronic Modules" Chaired by Craig Gaw of Motorola and Torsten Wipiejewski of Siemens AG.
K. Cooper of Karl Suss America described a flip chip instrument for AuSn attaching an edge emitter to a V grove silicon ship with fiber. Self alignment with mechanical stop has proved itself in production. The machine is on a granite base to help give high optical resolution. Temperature control is accurate up to 300C.
D. Sieniawski of Nortel described low cost 10 Gb/s Modules. It was 1 mm square placed on AlN substrate to dissipate 1 W of power. A ceramic multilayer feedthrough in the package has proved to work as well as an SMA connector.
J. Guenter discussed a "Ferruleless Fiber-Optic Transceivers". One must control costs if you want to go head to head with the Silicon / copper juggernaut. Honeywell has shown that precision injection molded plastic connectors can work for 10 - 1000 Mb/s without the need of ferrules. Their connectors self align as the socketting is performed.
Werbin Jiang of Motorola discussed a novel but simple way of sampling VCSEL output with a slanted lid on the TO can to allow Automatic Power Control.

Session 14 presented many new "Approaches to Packaging Education in the 21st Century". Rao Tummala of Georgia Tech and Albert Puttlitz chaired this session. Gary May presented a multimedia approach to teaching Electronics Packaging. The student can use the Internet interface to simulate a packaging laboratory. Three education development grants were made based on presentation / proposals in sessions at ECTC.

Session 15 concentrated on "Optical Microbench Technology" and was chaired by Mino Dautartas of Lucent and Masatake Itoh of NEC. J. Osenback of Lucent discussed assembly of a Laser module using optical bench Technology. Included was an Aluminum oxide / SiO2 pressure bond that eliminated the creep normally feared from solder bonds. It also eliminated moisture, shrinkage, and outgasing problems of epoxy.
E. Anderson of TRW described an optical bench made from III-V InP material. Active devices were integrated directly into the bench.
Long Sun Huang of UCLA discussed packaging of 3-D micro-mirrors. Silicon submounts were used to give alignment.