Campus Spotlight
August 18, 2023
Photo by
Carlos Ortiz
AIM Photonics hosted several days of training Aug. 15-17 in Photonic Integrated Circuits: Testing and Packaging. Training was first at its Test, Assembly and Packaging (TAP) facility in Rochester, for an overview and scope of available resources to set up participants for collaborations in their state-of-the-art cleanrooms. Lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on testing assembly work followed at Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Rochester. Workshop participants came from the U.S. integrated photonics industry and academia.
Photo by Carlos Ortiz
In the IT Collaboratory, located in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, Professor Stefan Preble, center, led participants in the intricate processes to modulate, switch, and filter light for the photonic chips. The groups are small, allowing participants to focus on hands-on photonic integrated circuits testing and packaging processing—dicing, die-bonding, wire-bonding, fiber attach, and metrology. The goal is to introduce participants to the cutting-edge techniques used to test, analyze, and package photonic integrated circuits as part of the Department of Defense's Education Workforce Development initiative.
Photo by Carlos Ortiz
At RIT, several of Professor Stefan Preble’s students helped to prepare the workshop activities for the AIM Photonics workshop participants. Lilian Neim, a doctoral student in the RIT microsystems engineering program, worked with participants on ring resonators, some of the basic building blocks for photonics devices, to ensure that the power and energy of light is maximized for the chips.
Photo by Carlos Ortiz
AIM Phontonics is a national institute supporting the photonics manufacturing ecosystem. It was established in 2015 and has contributed to the evolving photonics industry through multiple educational, workforce development, and research initiatives. Mario Ciminelli, right, a photonics packaging engineer, describes the process of fiber attachments on the photonics chips.
Photo by Carlos Ortiz
Left to right, Lilian Neim, Vijay Sundaraman, and Joseph Monteleone, all RIT microsystems engineering doctoral students, and Jacob Bartholomew, a fifth-year electrical engineering student, assisted with the day’s itinerary, including the modeling of the electrical circuit activities for the workshop participants.
