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

光子，即光的粒子，可以非常高的效率长距离传播，特别是在极低损耗的光缆中传播时。因此，光子被用作构成互联网主干的光通信技术的信息载体。集成光子芯片，简称集成光子学，由许多微米级的光学器件组成，已经成为编码光子颜色、偏振、形状和位置信息所需的基本技术。除了光通信，集成光子学已经实现了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有效地将集成光子芯片的“微观世界”与光纤的“宏观世界”相连接的能力。在实验室环境中，这是使用笨重、昂贵和高精度的定位器来实现的，这使得该系统在实际应用中的使用具有挑战性。光子引线键合(PWB)是将光纤永久连接到光子芯片上的工艺，非常适合于克服这一限制并提高集成光子学的性能和可用性。此外，它还可以让许多资源不足的社区(如小型大学、高中)访问这些系统，这些社区可能无法获得最先进的实验室设备。这项重大研究仪器(MRI)奖支持先锋自动化公司收购PWB系统。该工具将被放置在一个共享的洁净室设施中-哈佛纳米系统中心，NNCI网络的成员-在那里它将向许多学术和工业用户提供。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，并有助于培养一支多元化和精通光子的劳动力队伍。现代芯片级光子系统由许多光学器件组成，包括波导、谐振器、调制器、开关、激光器和探测器，这些器件在各种光子材料中实现，一端是光通信和计算，另一端是传感和精密测量。集成光子学面临的突出挑战是如何有效地获取芯片上和芯片外的光。由于亚微米级片上光波导和具有光学模直径超过10微米的商业可用光纤之间的大光学模式失配，当光从波导传递到光纤时，大部分光被损失。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，同时连接10秒或100秒设备)或对振动具有稳健性的应用尤其如此。最近，光子引线键合，一种普遍存在于电子电路中的光学等价物，已经成为一种很有前途的技术，可以在不同平台上的光子器件之间或者与光纤或激光之间建立高效和永久的连接。在这种方法中，三维聚合物波导被原位制造，以弥合位于不同芯片上的光子电路之间的间隙，或者芯片与光纤或激光器之间的间隙。这项技术不仅实现了光学芯片和光纤之间可扩展、高效和低损耗的接口，而且还允许实现组合不同材料的紧凑型混合器件。PWB工具将促进大量正在进行的研究项目的顺利完成，这些项目的重点是开发新型芯片级激光器(包括脉冲激光器)、频率梳和单光子源，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、环境监测、量子通信和计算中的应用。该工具还将通过执行长期、稳定的测量能力来实现新的机会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.