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（光粒子）可以以非常高的效率长距离传播，特别是在损耗极低的光纤电缆中传播时，因此，光子被用作构成互联网骨干的光通信技术的首选信息载体。集成光子芯片（简称集成光子学）由许多微米级光学器件组成，已成为以光子的颜色、偏振、形状和位置编码信息所需的基本技术，除了光通信之外，集成光子学已经成为可能。具有重大社会影响的广泛应用，包括环境监测、生物医学成像、机器视觉和高性能计算，这些应用关键依赖于集成光子芯片的“微观世界”与“宏观世界”的有效连接能力。在实验室环境中，这是通过使用笨重、昂贵且高精度的定位器来实现的，这使得该系统在实际应用中使用光子引线键合（PWB）这一永久过程具有挑战性。将光纤连接到光子芯片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，它还可以使许多可能无法访问的资源贫乏社区（例如小型大学、高中）使用这些系统。该重大研究仪器 (MRI) 奖项用于支持 Vanguard Automation 购买 PWB 系统，该工具将放置在共享洁净室设施中 - 哈佛大学纳米级系统中心（NNCI 网络成员）。 - 它将可供许多学术和工业用户使用，因此，该工具将实现许多科学突破，刺激技术进步和创业精神，并帮助培训由许多光学组成的多样化且精通光子的劳动力。器件，包括波导、谐振器、调制器、开关、激光器和探测器，在各种光子材料中实现，并实现了从光通信和计算到另一端的传感和精密测量的应用，这是集成的突出挑战。光子学由于亚微米级片上光波导和市售光纤之间存在较大的光学模式不匹配（光学模式直径超过十微米），因此会损失大量光。当光从波导传递到光纤时，这对于需要低温操作（例如在低温恒温器或稀释冰箱内）、在流体中操作（例如在传感器中）、可扩展性（例如在传感器中）的应用尤其如此。 10 或 100 个设备同时连接），或抗振动鲁棒性。最近，光子引线键合（一种与电路中普遍存在的电引线键合光学等效的技术）已成为一种在光子之间创建高效且永久连接的有前途的技术。在这种方法中，原位制造 3D 聚合物波导，以桥接位于不同芯片上的光子电路之间或芯片与光纤之间的间隙。该技术不仅可以实现光学芯片和光纤之间的可扩展、高效和低损耗的接口，而且还可以实现结合不同材料的紧凑型混合器件，这将有助于成功完成大量的工作。正在进行的研究项目重点关注新型芯片级激光器（包括脉冲激光器）、频率梳和单光子源的开发，以及它们在微波光子学、光通信和计算、时间和距离的精确测量中的应用、环境监测、量子通信和该工具还将通过执行长期稳定测量的能力带来新的机会。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。