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JANUARY 2025 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 39 • Electro-optical printed circuit boards integrate optical and copper paths on the same board. • At high frequencies, signal integrity suf- fers because of the skin effect, crosstalk, and skew when passing through copper systems. Optical systems do not have these issues and provide greater channel density than copper. • Optical systems can reduce the surface area of a PCB by 20% and the number of layers on the multilayer board by up to 50%. • Flexible optical PCBs use specific trans- parent materials, such as acrylic or clear epoxy fixtures. • High-speed optical interconnects employ lasers, fiber optics, waveguide technology, and polarization components to send data directly from one interface to another with- out intermediate conversions or delays. • A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) is a microchip containing two or more pho- tonic components forming a functioning circuit. is technology detects, generates, transports, and processes light. • Optical signal transmission is impervious to electromagnetic interference (EMI). It is ideal for mixed-signal systems. • e fabrication steps in an optical PCB need to be compatible with processes in the prevalent PCB industry. • To construct an EOCB, low-cost glass sheets can be laminated with a conven- tional organic base material such as FR-4. • An essential technology for EOCB is the fabrication of waveguides in the glass, akin to the optical equivalent of printing cir- cuits on a PCB. DESIGN007 Resources • Beyond Design Columns by Barry Olney: "Next Gen PCBs—Substrate Integrated Wave- guides," "Fly-over Technology—When It All Gets Too Fast." • "Three trends driving the demand for EOCB," Fraunhofer IZM. • "Electro-optical circuit board (EOCB) enables photonic integrated circuits," by Rajesh Uppal, International Defense, Security and Technol- ogy, June 28, 2021. • The Glassy Future of Circuit Boards, RealIZM, March 4, 2020. Barry Olney is managing director of In-Circuit Design Pty Ltd (iCD), Australia, a PCB design service bureau that specializes in board-level simulation. The company developed the iCD Design Integrity software, incor- porating the iCD Stackup, PDN, and CPW Planner. You can download the software at www.icd.com.au. To read past columns, click here.