Silicon Photonic Circuit Design Using Rapid Prototyping Foundry Process Design Kits
Lukas Chrostowski, Hossam A. Shoman, Mustafa Hammood, Han Yun, Jaspreet Jhoja, Enxiao Luan, Stephen Lin, Ajay Mistry, Donald M. Witt, Nicolas A. F. Jaeger, Sudip Shekhar, Hasitha Jayatilleka, Philippe Jean, Simon Bélanger-de Villers, Jonathan Cauchon, Wei Shi, Cameron Horvath, Jocelyn N. Westwood‐Bachman, Kevin Setzer, Mirwais Aktary · IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics · 2019
A successful design, fabrication and test of silicon photonic circuits requires design tools, process design kits (PDKs), foundries for fabrication, and test facilities. This paper describes the complete design flow of photonic circuits using rapid-prototyping multiproject wafer foundry processes available in the SiEPIC program. The focus of this paper is on rapid prototyping based on electron beam lithography as an alternative and complementary to what is available via deep-UV lithography-based foundries. We describe in detail the PDK and the use of open-source and commercial tools for the design of optical filters, sensors, neuromorphic photonic processors, optical switches, and discuss test and packaging approaches for these designs. We demonstrate that a “germanium less” process can be used to build small systems featuring photoconductive detectors, electronics, and phase shifters.