Fiber Alignment for Photonic Integrated Circuits

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.
The combination of different SmarAct Motion technologies is the key for a versatile system that enables fast and accurate alignment of fibers to PICs at wafer and die level. For example, SmarSHIFT electromagnetic direct drives combine speed, force and nm accuracy and can move wafers in up to six degrees of freedom. SmarPODs bring fibers in position via coarse alignment to couple light into and out of the wafer. Additional XY motion in a square of 60mm x 60mm is provided by SmarSLIDE stages.  
The actual fine-alignment is performed by a SmarFLEX XYZ piezo scanner stack, ideally combining the requirements of nm resolution and high speed. To minimize the coupling speed, the MCS2 controller includes algorithms that perform different scan movements and optimization routines which are based on the measured light power.