Parallel Heterogeneous Integration of III-V Devices on Silicon Photonic Chips

光子学是世界经济中最大和增长最快的市场之一。光学技术是从电信网络到传感器和计量设备等广泛应用的关键，IBM、英特尔和思科等工业巨头正在积极开发光学技术。与电子学经历的演变类似，对占地面积更小、成本更低、功能更高的光电子器件的需求推动了集成“光电子芯片”的快速发展。得益于电子行业数十年的巨额投资，硅正迅速成为光子集成芯片的标准材料平台。然而，由于其晶体结构，硅是一个非常差的光发射器，因此，真正集成的设备可以发射，处理和检测芯片上的光仍然是一个主要的挑战。III-V半导体材料如InP或GaAs在发光方面提供了更好的性能，但在大批量制造和成本方面无法与硅竞争。结合“两个世界的最佳”，即在硅材料平台上异构集成III-V型光源，被认为是一种有希望的解决方案，可以规避硅的缺陷，同时保持与工业硅制造范式的兼容性，从而在不需要完全重组供应链的情况下扩展到晶圆级复杂产品。基于格拉斯哥大学和斯特拉斯克莱德大学在光子集成器件和转移印刷技术方面的专业知识，该提案将开发一种组装技术，将有源III-V膜器件集成到无源硅光子集成电路上。该方法将展示具有亚微米定位精度和可扩展性的多器件并行转移到晶圆级生产。开发的技术将充分利用后端工艺，使其与当前的铸造标准兼容，因此具有商业利益。将开发光通信、气体传感和高密度数据存储方面的关键演示，以说明该方法的灵活性和在广泛应用领域的潜力。该项目将受益于几家学术和工业合作伙伴的支持，他们将在关键领域提供资源和专业知识，如III-V级光学器件（CST）的晶圆级制造、转移印刷系统工程（Fraunhofer）、电信和数据中心市场的光收发器（华为）、有源/无源光子系统的微组装（Kaiam）、用于硬盘数据存储的集成光子器件（希捷）、中红外气体传感器（GSS）、大规模硅光子器件（南安普顿大学）。该提案与EPSRC的“未来制造”主题和“未来系统的光子学”优先事项保持一致，并涉及制造技术、光通信、光学器件和子系统、光电器件和电路、组件和系统等特定投资组合领域

Photonics is one of the largest and fasted growing markets of the world economy. Optical technologies are key to a vast range of applications from telecommunications networks to sensor and metrology equipment and are being actively developed by industrial giants such as IBM, Intel and Cisco. In a similar way to the evolution experienced by electronics, the demand for photonics devices with smaller footprint, lower cost and higher functionality has propelled the rapid development of integrated "photonics chips". Thanks to the legacy provided by decades of enormous investments in the electronic industry, silicon is rapidly becoming the standard material platform for photonic integrated chips. However, because of its crystalline structure, silicon is a very poor light emitter and, therefore, truly integrated devices that can emit, process and detect light on-chip still represent a major challenge. III-V semiconductor materials such as InP or GaAs provide far better performance in terms of light emission but cannot compete with silicon in terms of large volume manufacturing and cost. Combining the "best from the two worlds", i.e. heterogeneously integrating III-V light emitters on a silicon material platform, is regarded as a promising solution to circumvent the deficiencies of silicon yet keeping compatibility with industrial silicon manufacturing paradigms to allow scaling to wafer level complex products without requiring a full retooling of the supply chain.Building on established expertise in photonic integrated devices and transfer printing technologies at Glasgow and Strathclyde universities, this proposal will develop an assembly technique to integrate active III-V membrane devices onto passive silicon photonic integrated circuits. The method will demonstrate parallel transfer of multiple devices with sub-micrometer positional accuracy and scalability to wafer-level production. The developed techniques will exploit fully back-end processes, making them compatible with current foundry standards and therefore commercial interests. Key demonstrators in optical communications, gas sensing and high density data storage will be developed to illustrate the flexibility of the methods and potential across a wide range of application spaces.The project will benefit from the support from several academic and industrial partners who will provide resources and expertise in key areas such as wafer-scale manufacturing of III-V optical devices (CST), transfer printing system engineering (Fraunhofer), optical transceivers for telecomm and datacentre markets (Huawei), micro-assembly of active/passive photonic systems (Kaiam), integrated photonic devices for HDD data storage (Seagate), mid-IR gas sensors (GSS), large-scale silicon photonics devices (Southampton University).The proposal aligns with EPSRC's Manufacturing the Future theme and the Photonics for Future Systems priority, and addresses specific portfolio areas such as Manufacturing Technologies, Optical Communications, Optical Devices & Subsystems, Optoelectronic Devices & Circuits, Components & Systems