Fiber Alignment for Photonic Integrated Circuits

Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) have great potential to drive the steady performance increase in information processing. PICs have advantages when it comes to higher density, higher speed, and improved power efficiency. Especially silicon photonics allows for a high level of integration by fabricating PICs with conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques.

For ultra-fast, high-precision alignment of fibers to PICs right at the wafer-level the combination of different SmarAct Motion technologies is the key. SmarAct supports you in testing PICs before packaging with various modular component-based systems or even with fully automated processes. A typical optical probing system consists of two fibers where one of them inserts light into the PIC and the other one reads it out.

The fast fine-alignment is performed by a SMARFLEX XYZ piezo scanner stack, combining nm resolution with a highly dynamic motion. To maximize coupling speed the MCS2 controller includes algorithms for different scan movements and for optimized data processing – resulting in a one-second-alignment.

For an optimized coupling angle SMARBOTIC’s SmarPod allows tilting and rotating the fiber around its tip. Additional XY motion in a square of 60mm x 60mm is provided by two optional SMARSLIDE stages. The wafer itself is moved by SMARSHIFT electromagnetic direct drives that combine speed, force and nm accuracy.

An optional capacitive sensor that is coupled to the vertical scanner stage prevents the fiber from colliding with the wafer.