Consortium set up to tackle photonics assembly costs

The Chip Integration Technology Center (CITC), Phix, Physik Instrumente and Tegema have put together a consortium for integrated photonics assembly called Podium. Funded by Photondelta and CITC, the PIC Open Development Infrastructure for Universal Markets offers assistance in optimizing the assembly and packaging of integrated photonics modules. Afterwards, customers can take their product into volume production, either at photonics assembly foundry Phix or in-house using Tegema’s platform.

The adoption of integrated photonics technology is hampered by high assembly costs: up to 80 percent of the total device costs is in electrical and optical packaging. Especially optical packaging requires a time-consuming active alignment of all optical components. This means that the device has to be switched on while the performance is optimized during alignment.

As an innovation center dedicated to heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging, CITC wants to remove this barrier. To this end, it already teamed up with system integrator Tegema, which in turn relies on positioning technology from Physik Instrumente. Together, these partners aim to develop the production processes and equipment to efficiently assemble photonic systems, which Phix can put into practice.