Etteplan Eindhoven launches photonic assembly platform

Etteplan’s Eindhoven office, formerly known as Tegema, has developed a flexible assembly platform for integrated photonics. Thanks to a modular design, the Indigo can handle a wide range of actions commonly required in the final steps of integrated-photonics manufacturing. This will greatly accelerate the prototyping of photonics products, says Etteplan.

The assembly of photonic integrated devices involves precise alignment and bonding of photonic chips to other components, such as optical fibers and electronics, and ensuring the thermal and mechanical stability of the final module. It’s been a bottleneck in scaling integrated-photonics technology for a long time, but (semi-)automation is increasingly bringing relief.

One of the challenges companies worldwide are struggling with is being able to quickly produce different prototypes. Normally, it would take days of adjusting the settings of a machine capable of making these products to switch in assembly from one prototype to another. The flexible and modular Indigo platform offers a way out of this by “drastically reducing the changeover time,” Etteplan reports.