Hybrid optical packaging, challenges and opportunities

Currently, a disproportionate amount of optical module costs is attributable to the packaging and testing operations.. Consequently, future products will require significant design and manufacturing improvements to overcome these cost barriers. Optical packaging from a macroscopic viewpoint can be reduced to a few principal challenges, namely optical coupling efficiencies, bonding technologies (including hermeticity), thermal management, electrical performance, an manufacturability, which entails the ease of assembly and amenability to automation. These challenges are common whether the optical systems are free space or guided wave optical packages. We address optical efficiencies, thermal management, bonding and manufacturability. The use of silicon optical bench as a platform is used to address manufacturability both in free space optics and guided wave optics. Passive alignment enables submicron accuracies and reduces the over-all assembly steps while reducing assembly complexity. Numerical and closed form simulations are used extensively to model the optical, thermal, and mechanical performance of the package design.