Equipment: MRI: Track #1 Acquisition of Photonic Wirebonding Tool for Quantum and Nanophotonics

设备： MRI：轨道

• 批准号: 2320265
• 负责人: Marko Loncar
• 金额: $ 99.94万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2320265&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Equipment; MRI; Track; #1; Acquisition

Photons, particles of light, can travel across long distances with very high efficiency, especially when propagating in very low loss fiber-optical cables. Therefore, photons are used as information carriers of choice for optical communication technology that forms the backbone of the internet. Integrated photonic chips - integrated photonics for short - consisting of many micron-scale optical devices, have emerged as an essential technology required to encode information in a photon’s color, polarization, shape, and position. Beyond optical communications, integrated photonics has enabled a wide range of applications with significant societal impact, including environmental monitoring, bio-medical imaging, machine vision, and high-performance computing. These applications crucially rely on the ability to efficiently interface “micro-world” of integrated photonic chips with “macro-world” of optical fibers. In the laboratory setting, this is achieved using bulky, expensive, and high-precision positioners, which renders the system challenging to use in real-world applications. Photonic wire bonding (PWB), the process of permanently attaching an optical fiber to a photonic chip, is ideally suited to overcome this limitation and improve the performance and usability of the integrated photonics. Furthermore, it can also make these systems accessible to many under-resourced communities (e.g. small colleges, high schools) who may not have access to state of the art laboratory equipment. This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award is supporting the acquisition of a PWB system by Vanguard Automation. The tool will be placed in a shared clean room facility - Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard, member of NNCI network - where it will be available to many academic and industrial users. Therefore, the tool will enable many scientific breakthroughs, stimulate technological advancements and entrepreneurship, and help train a diverse and photonic-savvy workforce. Modern chip-scale photonic systems consist of many optical devices, including waveguides, resonators, modulators, switches, lasers and detectors, realized in a variety of photonic materials and has enabled applications ranging from optical communications and computation on one end, to sensing and precision measurement on the other. The outstanding challenge for integrated photonics is that of efficiently getting light on- and off-chip. Due to the large optical mode mismatch between sub-micron scale on-chip optical waveguides and commercially available optical fibers, featuring optical mode diameters exceeding ten microns, much of the light is lost when light passes from the waveguide to the fiber. This is particularly true for applications that require low temperature operation (e.g. inside cryostat or dilution refrigerator), operation in fluids (e.g. in sensors), scalability (e.g. 10s or 100s devices to be connected at the same time), or robustness to vibrations. Recently, photonic wire bonding, an optical equivalent to electrical wire bonding ubiquitous in electrical circuits, has emerged as a promising technique to create efficient and permanent connections between photonic devices on different platforms, or with fibers or lasers. In this approach, 3-D polymer waveguides are fabricated in situ to bridge the gap between photonic circuits located on different chips, or between the chip and fiber or laser. This technique not only enables scalable, highly efficient, and low loss interface between optical chips and optical fibers, but also allows for the realization of compact hybrid devices that combine different materials. The PWB tool will facilitate successful completion of a large number of ongoing research programs focused on development of new types of chip-scale lasers (including pulsed ones), frequency combs and single-photon sources, for example, and their application in microwave photonics, optical communication and computing, precision measurements of time and distance, environmental monitoring, quantum communication and computation. The tool will also enable new opportunities by the ability to perform long term, stable measurements.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

光子（光线颗粒）可以以非常高的效率在长距离上行驶，尤其是在非常低损耗的纤维光线电缆中传播时。因此，照片被用作构成Internet骨干的光学通信技术首选信息载体。集成的光子芯片 - 简短的集成光子学 - 由许多微米级的光学设备组成，已成为用光子的颜色，偏振，形状和位置编码信息所需的必需技术。除了光学通信之外，集成的Photosnics还使广泛的应用程序具有重大的社会影响，包括环境监测，生物医学成像，机器视觉和高性能计算。这些应用程序始终依赖于具有光纤的“宏世界”的集成光子芯片的“微世界”的能力。在实验室环境中，这是使用笨重，昂贵且高精度的定位者实现的，这使系统挑战挑战在现实世界应用程序中。光子线键合（PWB）是将光纤永久连接到光子芯片的过程，非常适合克服这一限制并提高集成光子学的性能和可用性。此外，它还可以使许多资源不足的社区（例如小型大学，高中）可以使用这些系统，这些社区可能无法进入最先进的实验室设备。这项主要的研究工具（MRI）奖是通过Vanguard Automation支持对PWB系统的收购。该工具将放置在NNCI Network成员的哈佛大学纳米级系统中心共享的清洁室设施中 - 许多学术和工业用户都可以使用。因此，该工具将使许多科学突破，刺激技术进步和企业家精神，并帮助培训多样性和精通光子的劳动力。现代芯片尺度光子系统由许多光学设备组成，包括波导，谐振器，调节器，开关，激光器和探测器，在各种光子材料中实现，并实现了从一个末端的光学通信和计算，到另一端的敏感性和精确测量。集成光子学的杰出挑战是有效地在片上和片上获得光线。由于片上光学波导和市售光纤之间的较大的光学模式不匹配，具有超过10微米的光学模式直径，因此当光导向从波导到纤维时，大部分光线都会丢失。对于需要低温操作（例如内部低温或稀释冰箱），流体（例如，在传感器中），可伸缩性（例如10s或100s设备可以同时连接的100s设备）的应用，尤其如此。最近，光电线键合（一种相当于电路中电线粘结无处不在的光学键）已成为一种有前途的技术，可以在不同平台上或使用纤维或激光器上建立有效且永久的连接。在这种方法中，原位制造了3-D聚合物波导，以弥合位于不同芯片上或芯片和纤维或激光之间的光子电路之间的间隙。该技术不仅可以在光学芯片和光纤之间实现可扩展，高效且低损耗的接口，而且还可以实现结合不同材料的紧凑型混合设备。 PWB工具将有助于成功完成大量正在进行的研究计划，重点是开发新型的芯片尺度激光器（包括脉冲的激光器），频率梳子和单光源来源，例如，它们在微波光照射中的应用，光学传播，光学通信和计算，时间和远距离，环境，环境监视和计算的精确测量。该工具还将通过长期执行稳定测量的能力来实现新的机会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准，被视为通过评估而被视为珍贵的支持。