Planar Packaging Strategy for Grating-Coupled Silicon Photonic Devices Using Angle-Polished Silica Waveguide Blocks

Abstract

A planar fiber-to-chip coupling scheme for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) is suggested. Efficient light coupling between a silicon-based PIC with grating couplers and a standard single-mode optical fiber parallel with the PIC chip is realized by utilizing an angle-polished silica waveguide block fabricated with mature fabrication processes. Compared to the angle-polished-fiber-based coupling scheme, the demonstrated method can significantly decrease the distance between the fiber core and the grating coupler, and thereby offers several advantages in mechanical stability and misalignment tolerances. Simulations and experimental results suggest that the proposed technique is applicable to the passive-alignment-based photonics packaging processes.