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

光电子是世界经济中规模最大、增长最快的市场之一。从电信网络到传感器和计量设备，光学技术是广泛应用的关键，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、功能更强的光电子器件的需求推动了集成化“光电子芯片”的快速发展。由于几十年来在电子行业的巨额投资所留下的遗产，硅正在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，硅是一个非常差的发光体，因此，能够发射、处理和检测芯片上的光的真正集成的器件仍然是一个主要的挑战。InP或GaAs等III-V半导体材料在发光方面的性能要好得多，但在大批量制造和成本方面无法与硅竞争。结合“两个世界中最好的”，即在硅材料平台上异质集成III-V发光二极管，被认为是一种很有前途的解决方案，可以绕过硅的不足之处，同时保持与工业硅制造范式的兼容性，使其能够扩展到晶圆级复杂产品，而不需要全面重组供应链。该提议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成熟专业知识，将开发一种组装技术，将有源III-V薄膜器件集成到无源硅光子集成电路上。该方法将演示具有亚微米定位精度和可扩展到晶片级生产的多个设备的并行转移。开发的技术将充分利用后端工艺，使它们与当前的铸造标准兼容，从而符合商业利益。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，以说明这些方法在广泛的应用空间中的灵活性和潜力。该项目将受益于几个学术和工业合作伙伴的支持，这些合作伙伴将在关键领域提供资源和专业知识，如III-V光学器件的晶片规模制造(CST)、转移印刷系统工程(Fraunhofer)、电信和数据中心市场的光学收发器(华为)、主动/被动光子系统的微组装(Kaiam)、用于硬盘数据存储的集成光子设备(Seagate)、中红外气体传感器(GSS)、大规模硅光电子器件(南安普顿大学)。该提案符合EPSRC的制造未来主题和面向未来系统的光子学优先事项，并涉及特定的投资组合领域，如制造技术、光通信、光学设备和子系统、光电子设备和电路、组件和系统

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