TAP: America’s First Accessible 300 mm Photonic Packaging Facility

One of the biggest obstacles to commercializing advanced photonic integrated circuits (PICs) isn’t just chip design or fabrication—it’s packaging.

Photonic packaging is immensely complex. It requires precise, sub-micron-level optical alignment, integration with electronic components, robust thermal management, and protection from environmental damage. Without scalable and cost-effective solutions for these final steps, even the most innovative and groundbreaking integrated photonic technologies lack a clear path to widespread commercial or defense deployment.

Before AIM Photonics was established, the United States had no open-access packaging facility capable of handling 300 mm wafers for photonics—an essential requirement for integrating with today’s leading-edge semiconductor processes. This absence posed a major obstacle to both innovation and secure manufacturing, limiting the U.S. global competitiveness.

The creation of AIM Photonics’ Test, Assembly, and Packaging (TAP) facility in Rochester, New York in 2018, was the Institute’s response to the photonics industry’s needs for advanced and accessible packaging solutions. The establishment of TAP, the services it provides, and those coming on-line, is now being recognized as a pivotal milestone for the U.S. integrated photonics industry.

A First-of-Its-Kind Capability in the U.S.

As the first U.S. open-access facility for 300 mm wafer-scale photonic packaging, the TAP facility fills a strategically important part of a critical gap in domestic manufacturing. TAP provides advanced tools and technical expertise to a broad community of users across government, academia, and industry. Designed to serve everyone from startups to defense contractors, the facility also supports the integration of both photonic and electronic components, which is streamlining the development and shorting the to-market timeline of products dependent on advanced photonic systems.

The TAP facility stands out not only for its accessibility but for its comprehensive set of advanced tools and processes. Key capabilities include:

• High-precision optical alignment and fiber attach

• Flip-chip bonding and co-packaging with electronics

• Support for heterogeneous integration

• Back-end assembly and test infrastructure

The TAP facility complements AIM Photonics’ design enablement capabilities and multi-project wafer services, creating a unified, end-to-end path from initial design all the way through fabrication, packaging, and testing. By integrating these capabilities into its cohesive manufacturing framework, AIM Photonics strengthens the U.S. industrial base for integrated photonics.

Beyond Quality Control: Testing as a Strategic Tool

While packaging is widely recognized as a major cost driver in integrated photonics manufacturing, testing plays an equally vital role in enabling the scale to high volume by reducing risk and improving yield. Photonic devices are sensitive to fabrication defects and require precise alignment and tuning. Even small variations can lead to performance degradation or failure. Accuracy at the fabrication stage is critical in applications such as high-speed communications, precision navigation, real-time sensing, and defense technologies, where perfect performance, repeated reliability, and consistent stability are essential.

At AIM Photonics’ TAP facility, advanced testing capabilities are integrated throughout the full photonic device lifecycle. The facility can conduct wafer-level characterization, post-packaging evaluation, and precision metrology and inspection all in one location.  This eliminates the need for costly in-house testing or outsourcing, while accelerating development cycles and improving process control. Just as important, the Institute’s team of experts provides hands-on support at every stage—offering guidance, troubleshooting, and technical insight to help users navigate complex challenges and optimize their designs for manufacturability.

Beyond quality control, the testing being done at TAP also generates critical data that informs and improves fabrication and packaging processes, leading to greater consistency and yield, ensuring performance from the integrated photonics circuits is consistent with expectations.

Enabling Secure Manufacturing

Maintaining onshore manufacturing for integrated photonics—especially in packaging and testing—is vital for national security, supply chain integrity, and industrial resilience. For years, the U.S. has lacked accessible domestic packaging capabilities, creating a dependence on overseas facilities to complete critical production steps. This dependence left the U.S. lagging in global competitiveness in the advanced photonics packaging space and introduces security risks such as the potential exposure of sensitive intellectual property and trade secrets in both defense and commercial applications.

AIM Photonics’ packaging and testing capabilities help close this vulnerability by allowing the most critical components to be developed, assembled, and evaluated entirely in the U.S. This also reduces reliance on foreign suppliers, shortens development timelines, and helps safeguard sensitive technologies from being compromised. Beyond security, the expansion of domestic manufacturing also delivers economic benefits. A strong integrated photonics industrial base creates a highly skilled workforce and accelerates U.S. innovation, laying the foundation for long-term growth and global competitiveness in this emerging field.

A Strategic Investment in America’s Photonics Future

New York State has played an indispensable role in advancing American leadership in integrated photonics through its investment in AIM Photonics. At the heart of this effort is the TAP facility in Rochester, which stands as a flagship achievement and fills one of the most critical gaps in the U.S. photonics supply chain.

Through a comprehensive $250 million commitment to advance the semiconductor infrastructure in New York, the State enabled AIM Photonics to establish advanced packaging and testing capabilities that completes the nation’s first end-to-end domestic manufacturing infrastructure for integrated photonics. The most recent investment from Empire State Development, totaling $27M, has augmented and enhanced the tools and equipment at the TAP facility. This is accelerating the operational timeline for AIM Photonics to offer not only test, assembly and packaging, but a true end-to-end solution from design to commercialization that will usher these next-generation technologies into everyday life.

Related Information:

Photonic Integrated Circuit Testing: Accelerating R&D From Lab to Fab (Tech Briefs Magazine)

AIM Photonics Announces New Opto-electronic Testing Services