Extending the data transfer rates through dense interconnections at inter- and intraboard levels is a well-established technique\nespecially in consumer electronics at the expense of more cross talk, electromagnetic interference (EMI), and power dissipation.\nOptical transmission using optical fibre is practically immune to the aforementioned factors. Among the\nmanufacturing methods, UV laser ablation using an excimer laser has been repeatedly demonstrated as a suitable technique to\nfabricate multimode polymer waveguides. However, the main challenge is to precisely control and predict the topology of the\nwaveguides without the need for extensive characterisation which is both time consuming and costly. In this paper, the authors\npresent experimental results of investigation to relate the fluence, scanning speed, number of shots, and passes at varying pulse\nrepetition rate with the depth of ablation of an acrylate-based photopolymer. The depth of ablation essentially affects total\ninternal reflection and insertion loss, and these must be kept at minimum for a successful optical interconnection on printed\ncircuit boards. The results are then used to predict depth of ablation for this material by means of adaptive neurofuzzy inference\nsystem (ANFIS) modelling. The predicted results, with a correlation of 0.9993, show good agreement with the experimental\nvalues. This finding will be useful in better predictions along with resource optimisation and ultimately helps in reducing cost of\npolymer waveguide fabrication.
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