RPO’s optical waveguides are made from proprietary material system, Inorganic Polymer Glass™.  By making waveguides from Inorganic Polymer Glass™, RPO can control both the optical and physical properties, making them suitable for many applications. Uniquely, RPO’s polymer optical waveguides, made from Inorganic Polymer Glass™, do not require ‘packaging’ to protect them from environmental conditions.

RPO has developed a low cost waveguide manufacturing technology using photo-resist tools from the LCD industry. This allows RPO to make Telecom-grade optical waveguides on large flexible substrates, at costs 2-3 orders of magnitude cheaper than previously possible with inorganic glass optical waveguides. Apart from lowering costs, this unique approach allows the production of large waveguide sets.

RPO manufacturers optical waveguides on both wafer (4 & 5 inch) and panel (400mm x 500mm) substrates. Die design, layout and footprint are customized to customers' cost, performance, assembly and packaging requirements. These waveguides are optimized to perform in all environments without durability issues or reduction in optical performance. RPO can supply waveguides in small quantities for specialized applications, or very large quantities for consumer electronic applications.

RPO’s optical waveguides can incorporate a number of features including micro-lens structures, high precision optical waveguides for channeling light, and multiple layer optical structures. In addition RPO’s waveguide structures can be manufactured on rigid or flexible substrates, and on wafer samples or on large-panel substrates for reduced costs, or larger samples.

RPO’s optical waveguides can be used in three key types of applications:

• Lighting
• Communications
• Sensors

In lighting, RPO’s waveguides are used to deliver light in an extremely precise fashion using the latest semiconductor light sources (eg LED, OLED, VCSEL’s). In communications, RPO waveguides are used as passive components (eg filters, connectors, splitters) in optical fiber communication paths. In sensors, RPO waveguides are used to channel high precision light to a sensing application, and then onto a light receiver for sensing.

Target markets for RPO’s optical waveguides in lighting include LCD backlighting, display front-lighting, and specialist high precision light piping applications in consumer & specialist electronics. In communications, applications include high speed optical interconnects (chip to chip, chip to board, board to board) and LAN and FTTH passive optical components. Finally, in sensors, RPO’s waveguides can be applied to touch-screens, bio-chips and other high-value sensor applications.

In each area of application RPO has competitors for its waveguide technology:

• Lighting: molded light pipes, stamped optical structures
• Communications: glass optical waveguides, optical fiber components, thin film filter technology, micro-optic components
• Sensors: molded light pipes, stamped optical structures

RPO’s technology offers key advantages over these technologies, particularly in the accuracy, precision and complexity of the optical structures that can be created, very low yield failures due to the use of a non-contact lithography process, and the lowest costs for any given performance target.