Assembly and testing remain the highest cost factors in photonic integrated circuit (PIC) production. To address this issue, international collaborations around the globe are actively researching new manufacturing concepts for PIC technology. The goal of these projects is to provide industry with an eco-system that will enable manufacturing to progress from the 1000s to the 100,000s and even millions, from single chip assembly to wafer-level approaches.

ficonTEC has consistently retained involvement in these initiatives in order to stay ahead of industry requirement. Add to this 20 years of development, continually working closely with the customer, and an invaluable modular approach to machine equipment design – all this uniquely places ficonTEC in a position to thoroughly describe your production requirements in terms of established process capabilities.

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A brief introduction to an increasingly critical step in photonic device manufacturing
#photonics_assembly_and_test

The alignment and bonding of opto-electronic chips and components, free-beam micro-optics and/or fiber-optic connections into finished photonic devices is commonly referred to as photonics assembly & test (some simply refer to this as packaging). Typical devices include telecom/datacom transceivers (TOSA/ROSA/BOSA), infrastructure devices for 5G networks, photonics-based (3D) sensors including those used in commercial, automotive and aerospace (LiDAR) systems, integrated PICs, high-power multi-emitter laser assemblies, micro-optical and optofluidic systems, integrated camera modules, fiber-coupled devices, and much more. Advanced automation of the assembly process steps requires multi-axis, sub-micron-accuracy component alignment (passive/active) and subsequent bonding using (UV-) epoxy compounds, thermal-based or laser-induced soldering and/or laser welding.

In particular, all manufacturing steps need to be compliant with stringent and often bespoke requirements for yield, process repeatability and performance reliability, while still enabling minimal process cycle time and minimum downtime. Finished devices also need testing and is required for simple devices such as laser diode chips and VCSELs, all the way up to the more complex devices noted above. Testing encompasses burn-in, LIV tests, beam and spectral characterization, as well as device design validation and performance verification.

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