Recent advances in fiber-to-PIC packaging technologies for scalable manufacturing

We present a photonic packaging paradigm where the light from an edge coupler of a photonic integrated circuit is turned normal to the surface using a specially-manufactured silicon micro-lens equipped with an etched turning prism. Due to expansion of the beam, the alignment tolerances of coupling to similarly-equipped fiber array are significantly relaxed making it compatible with the future surface-mounted pluggable solutions. We demonstrate sub-2 dB coupling efficiency at 1310 nm from a transceiver chip.