Taking a Holistic Approach to Co-Packaged Optics Manufacturing

By THOMAS ACHLEITNER, Business Development Manager, EV Group

As AI systems scale from individual processors to large clusters of accelerators, moving data between them has become a system-level challenge. Co-packaged optics (CPO) addresses it by integrating photonic devices in the same package as the processors or switch silicon they serve. But Thomas Achleitner of EV Group argues that moving CPO into high-volume manufacturing will take expertise across bonding, nanoimprint lithography and heterogeneous integration, not advances in any single process.

CPO brings photonic and electronic ICs, lasers, modulators and optical coupling structures together from very different materials. Hybrid bonding can enable low-parasitic PIC-to-EIC integration, while die-to-wafer fusion bonding allows known-good InP laser dies to be placed selectively and helps limit stress when integrating electro-optic materials such as thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) and barium titanate (BTO). Oxide-free room-temperature bonding can add heat spreaders such as diamond and SiC for thermal management.

Nanoimprint lithography offers a wafer-level way to make grating couplers, microlens arrays and fiber-attach structures, sometimes in a single imprint step. As the industry moves toward optical I/O chiplets and 3D photonic-electronic integration, Achleitner writes, these challenges will only become more closely linked.

Click here to read the full article in the SEMICON West Show Daily.

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