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

光子，光的粒子，可以以非常高的效率长距离传播，特别是在非常低损耗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。除了光通信之外，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。这些应用至关重要地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”连接起来的能力。在实验室环境中，这是通过使用体积庞大、价格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具有挑战性。光子线键合（PWB）是一种将光纤永久连接到光子芯片上的方法，它非常适合克服这一限制，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（例如小型学院、高中）能够使用这些系统，这些社区可能无法获得最先进的实验室设备。该主要研究仪器（MRI）奖支持先锋自动化公司对PWB系统的收购。该工具将被放置在一个共享的洁净室设施——哈佛大学纳米系统中心，NNCI网络的成员——在那里它将被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，并有助于培养多元化和精通光子的劳动力。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，在各种光子材料中实现，并使应用范围从光通信和计算到另一端的传感和精密测量。集成光子学最突出的挑战是如何有效地在片内和片外获得光。由于亚微米级片上光波导与商用光纤（其光模直径超过10微米）之间存在较大的光模不匹配，当光从波导传输到光纤时，大部分光会丢失。这对于需要低温操作（例如在低温恒温器或稀释冰箱内），流体操作（例如在传感器中），可扩展性（例如同时连接10s或100s设备）或抗振动稳健性的应用尤其适用。最近，光子线键合，一种在电路中普遍存在的光学等效的电线键合，已经成为一种有前途的技术，可以在不同平台上的光子器件之间，或与光纤或激光建立有效和永久的连接。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差距，或者芯片与光纤或激光之间的差距。该技术不仅可以在光芯片和光纤之间实现可扩展、高效和低损耗的接口，还可以实现组合不同材料的紧凑混合器件。PWB工具将促进大量正在进行的研究项目的成功完成，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测量的能力提供新的机会。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.