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穿越长距离，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，集成光子学还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。这些应用关键地依赖于将集成光子芯片的“微观世界”与光纤的“宏观世界”有效地接口的能力。在实验室环境中，这是通过使用庞大、昂贵和高精度的定位器来实现的，这使得该系统在现实世界的应用中具有挑战性。光子引线键合（PWB）是将光纤永久连接到光子芯片的过程，非常适合克服这种限制并提高集成光子器件的性能和可用性。此外，它还可以使这些系统进入许多资源不足的社区（例如小型学院，高中），他们可能无法获得最先进的实验室设备。该重大研究仪器（MRI）奖项支持Vanguard Automation收购PWB系统。该工具将被放置在一个共享的洁净室设施-中心纳米尺度系统在哈佛，成员的NNCI网络-在那里它将提供给许多学术和工业用户。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，并帮助培养多样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、激光器和检测器，它们以各种光子材料实现，并实现了从一端的光通信和计算到另一端的传感和精密测量的应用。集成光子学面临的突出挑战是有效地将光传输到芯片上和芯片外。由于亚微米尺度的片上光波导和市售光纤之间的大的光模失配，其特征在于光模直径超过10微米，当光从波导传递到光纤时，大部分光损失。这对于需要低温操作（例如低温恒温器或稀释冰箱内）、在流体中操作（例如传感器中）、可扩展性（例如同时连接10或100个设备）或对振动鲁棒性的应用尤其如此。最近，光子引线键合，一种光学等效电路中无处不在的电线键合，已经成为一种有前途的技术，以创建不同平台上的光子器件之间的有效和永久的连接，或与光纤或激光器。在这种方法中，原位制造3-D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或激光器之间的差距。该技术不仅能够实现光学芯片和光纤之间的可扩展、高效和低损耗的接口，而且还允许实现组合联合收割机不同材料的紧凑混合装置。PWB工具将促进大量正在进行的研究计划的成功完成，这些计划侧重于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，例如，及其在微波光子学，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.