APL Photonics (Nov 2021)

Silicon photonic beam steering module with backside coupling elements toward dense heterogeneous integration with drive electronics

  • X. Chen,
  • F. Meng,
  • S. A. Fortune,
  • A. J. Compston,
  • M. Ebert,
  • X. Yan,
  • H. Du,
  • M. Banakar,
  • D. T. Tran,
  • C. G. Littlejohns,
  • D. J. Thomson,
  • R. Nicolaescu,
  • G. T. Reed

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0065210
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 11
pp. 116106 – 116106-7

Abstract

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Solid state beam steering devices are key elements in low cost, robust, and three-dimensional imaging systems. Here, we present a silicon photonic beam steering device based upon an 8 × 8 grating coupler focal plane array approach fed by a thermo-optic Mach–Zehnder switching tree. In this device, transmission of light from the grating couplers is made through the backside of the chip using topside mirrors allowing for both high-efficiency out-coupling and direct flip-chip integration of drive electronics, providing a path to scale to denser focal plane arrays with large numbers of points in the future. A −13.8 dB fiber-to-fiber transmission was achieved in our preliminary test around 1523 nm for the beam steering chip.