Fiber-to-chip fusion splicing for low-loss photonic packaging

Silicon photonic devices are poised to enter high-volume markets such as data communications, telecommunications, biological sensing, and optical phased arrays. Permanently attaching a fiber to the photonic chip with high optical efficiency, however, remains a challenge. We present a robust, low-loss packaging technique of permanent optical edge coupling between a fiber and a chip using fusion splicing that is low-cost and scalable for high-volume manufacturing. We fuse a SMF-28 cleaved fiber to the chip via a CO2 laser and reinforce it with optical adhesive. We demonstrate minimum loss of 1.0 dB per facet with 0.6 dB penalty over a 160 nm bandwidth from 1480 to 1640 nm.