Towards autonomous testing of photonic integrated circuits

摘要

A crucial component of any large scale manufacturing line is the development of autonomous testing at the wafer scale. This work offers a solution through the fabrication of grating couplers in the silicon-on-insulator platform via ion implantation. The grating is subsequently erased after testing using laser annealing without affecting the optical performance of the photonic circuit. Experimental results show the possibility for the realisation of low loss, compact solutions which may revolutionise photonic wafer-scale testing. The process is CMOS compatible and can be implemented in other platforms to realise more complex systems such as multilayer photonics or programmable optical circuits.