PHOTONICS WORKSHOPS AND BOOT CAMPS

Our workshops and boot camps give students hands-on experience testing and packaging photonic chips. This is not a lecture format. Students spend their time in the lab, which prepares them for the challenges they will face in the workforce.

The rapidly expanding, emerging technology of integrated photonics is revolutionizing the microelectronics industry in the areas of low-power cloud computing, ultra-high-speed wireless, smart sensing, and augmented imaging. Photonics enables electronic devices to communicate within an integrated circuit package. Through AIM Photonics’ experiential learning workshops and boot camps, participants will learn key concepts and receive hands-on training using state-of-the-art tools to gain the skills, experience, confidence, and expertise the semiconductor workforce needs.

Registration may be limited to provide the highest quality, hands-on experience and one-on-one interaction with instructors.

Photonics Boot Camp

DATES: January 16-18, 2024
LOCATION: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Bridgewater State University

Topics

  • Basic concepts in photonic devices - TE/TM propagation modes, light confinement, evanescence, on- chip guiding, and applications

  • Prototyping using integrated circuit packaging - Die-bonding of surface-mounted components using reflow

  • Characterizing integrated photonic devices - Collect data from on-chip straight waveguides, Mach-Zehnder interferometers and/or ring resonators

  • Fiber-to-chip coupling - Couple light into an AIM Photonics SOI chip using edge coupling

  • PIC sensors - Mid-infrared chemical sensing using integrated photonics

  • LiDAR imaging - Non-mechanical beam steering using integrated optical phased arrays for LiDAR sensing applications

  • Photonic engineering tools - Laser beam characterization and fiber splicing

  • Data analysis - Software to characterize photonic devices based on measured data

 

PIC Test and Packaging Workshop

DATES: March 11-13, 2024
LOCATION: Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), University of Rochester, and AIM Photonics’ Test, Assembly, and Packaging facility in Rochester, New York

Topics

  • Passive PIC Testing – Coupling/alignment, waveguide loss, and interference

  • Active PIC Testing – Mach-Zehnder modulator and photodetector

  • Packaging – Dicing, die bonding, wire bonding, fiber attach and metrology

Participants will use the AIM Photonics’ Hands on Photonic Education (HOPE) Datacom Kit, a six-chip photonic integrated chip (PIC) kit focused on the fundamental concepts used in data communications, including:

  • Insertion Loss

  • Interference

  • Mach-Zehnder Modulation

  • Germanium Photodetectors

  • Ring Resonator – Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) / Demultiplexing

  • WDM Micro-ring Modulation