Spectral variation analysis of integrated silicon photonics devices by using optical wafer probing

Photonic integrated circuits using silicon photonics technology have been emerging a promising solution to enlarge the bandwidth in data transmission by optical interconnection between LSI's, boards, and servers. Silicon photonics devices integrated by the existing CMOS technology can have better reproducibility than III-V based or silica-based photonics devices. However, high-volume optical device testing is a critical issue for the PIC's. This paper reviews the wafer-level probing technique to optically characterize a large number of silicon photonics devices, and the analytical method to extract the fabrication deviation in the waveguide from the spectrum variation of the optical device. This paper also describes excellent reproducibility in the performance of optical devices fabricated with 300 mm SOI wafers using 40 nm node CMOS technology.