Danemark – Machines et appareils d'essai et de mesure – One Photonic Wafer Probe Station and one Photonic Assembly Station

This tender concerns DTU Nano's planned procurement of a Photonic Assembly Station and a Photonic Wafer Probe Station. The tender is split into to two lots – one for each of the two stations. Tenderers may choose to bid on one or both lots, which will be evaluated and awarded individually.

The assembly station is for connecting fibre array units (FAUs) to an optical chip. The type of connection will be edge coupling using waveguides loops for alignment but if necessary, the alignment can also be performed either using the light source on the chip (if it exists) or by using an external light source and connecting two FAUs, one on each side of the chip. Thus, the main purpose of the machine is to do assembly and fiber attachment of photonic chips.

The system shall support research, prototyping, process development, pilot manufacturing, and low-volume production activities within DTU Nano's advanced fabrication facility. DTU has activities within Silicon Photonics (SiPh), Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), Optical transceivers, Laser modules, Photodetectors, Fiber-optic assemblies, Co-packaged optics and Quantum photonic devices which we want to support in the best possible way. DTU therefore intends to purchase a reconfigurable, flexible, versatile machine.

The purpose of the photonic wafer probe station is to characterise the quality of photonic integrated circuits (PICs). It should be possible to characterise both optical and electrical performance. For the optical characterisation, the main coupling in/out technique will be through grating couplers, but the equipment should be possible to be configured also for edge coupling to component facets in a grove on the wafer.

In this case, different holders and fibres may be needed. The electrical characteristics are to be characterised both in DC as well as RF up to 40GHz using probe and/or probe cards. The system shall support research, development, process qualification, and routine characterization activities within DTU Nano's advanced fabrication facility.