Silicon Photonic Circuit Design Using Rapid Prototyping Foundry Process Design Kits

A successful design, fabrication and test of silicon photonic circuits requires design tools, process design kits (PDKs), foundries for fabrication, and test facilities. This paper describes the complete design flow of photonic circuits using rapid-prototyping multiproject wafer foundry processes available in the SiEPIC program. The focus of this paper is on rapid prototyping based on electron beam lithography as an alternative and complementary to what is available via deep-UV lithography-based foundries. We describe in detail the PDK and the use of open-source and commercial tools for the design of optical filters, sensors, neuromorphic photonic processors, optical switches, and discuss test and packaging approaches for these designs. We demonstrate that a “germanium less” process can be used to build small systems featuring photoconductive detectors, electronics, and phase shifters.