Optical performance and reliability assessment from self-aligned single mode fiber attach for O-band silicon photonics platform

Demand for higher bandwidth and lower latency with lower power consumption calls for an alternative solution other than copper-based technology. Silicon photonics can satisfy the demand as a cost-effective solution by leveraging well-established high volume silicon technology. One of the first steps to this is to enable efficient optical interconnect, guiding light between multiple optical fibers and photonic integrated circuit (PIC) with minimal insertion/ conversion loss. To address this, a PIC with multiple Vgrooves was fabricated on 300 mm wafer process platform and passive fiber attach was performed. Multiple standard single mode optical fibers were attached in the Vgrooves simultaneously, which highlights the advantage of passive fiber attach compared to other rigorous active fiber attach technique, then the light was effectively converted from micron scale optical mode in the fiber to hundreds of nanometer scale in PIC through metamaterial spot size converter in the Vgroove domain. Good average optical insertion loss less than 2 dB was achieved in O-band and robust stability performance up on various environmental stress tests was demonstrated.