The AIM Photonics MPW: A Highly Accessible Cutting Edge Technology for Rapid Prototyping of Photonic Integrated Circuits

Silicon photonics has been heralded for a number of high technology fields, but access to a high quality technology has been limited to vertically integrated design/fabrication companies, or fabless companies with significant resources to engage high volume fabs. More recently, research and development hubs have developed and released process design kits and multi-project wafer programs to lower the barrier. We present the first silicon photonics multi-project wafer (MPW) service produced in a state-of-the-art 300 mm fabrication facility. The MPW service is enabled by a best-in-class process design kit (PDK) which allows designers to layout and obtain photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that work properly on the first run. The fabrication of these circuits is carried out at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute which operates a world class 300 mm cleanroom that, besides silicon photonics, develops sub-7 nm CMOS architectures. The industrial-level management of this facility and its equipment provides high quality photonic devices which are repeatable from run-to-run along with rapid turnaround time. The devices that are available to designers via the process design kit are produced by Analog Photonics and have been verified on actual runs. The performance of these devices is comparable to the state-of-the-art and enables a wide variety of silicon photonic applications.