Thermal via technology for silica-based planar lightwave circuit

We propose the first thermal via technology for a silica-based planar lightwave circuit (PLC) to enable us to stack electronic components such as transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) on a PLC. This is possible because the effective heat dissipation of the via can prevent the performance degradation of the TIA. The temperature increase of the TIAs was suppressed to only 8.7°C by the thermal vias, while it was 15.7°C without them. Silica-based PLCs with thermal vias will be a key technology for compact high performance PLC devices.