Photonic Wirebonds

Photonic integrated circuit technology is used for many applications including optical communications, optical computing, and sensing. A major challenge facing the industry is connecting multiple integrated photonic components together with low insertion loss, in a cost effective manner, into a package suitable for commercialization. A promising approach is to create “photonic wirebonds”, namely optical waveguides that look similar to conventional electrical wirebonds. Proof of concept demonstrations have been done using a commercial 3D printer; a dedicated photonic wirebond tool is presently being commercialized by Vanguard Photonics. However, despite the potential advantage of high-throughput packaging and low cost, no commercial products yet exist using this approach. For practical applications that use photonic wirebonds, the project will aim for a robust, reliable, fast, and reproducible solution.