Everything Old is New Again: Photonics Repeating Semiconductor Manufacturing’s Script

From Silicon Photonics’ humble beginnings in data-center interconnects, the field now encompasses chip-scale packaging standards, applications ranging from personal health to autonomous transport, novel computing paradigms, and connectivity that ranges from chiplet interconnects to planetary-scale connectivity. The field is even mature enough to have seen its first flame-outs, but the industry is now big enough to glide over these potholes. Photonics is here to stay, in a big way.

And that’s the problem confronting us now: old ways of manufacturing must be supplanted with scalable, modern alternatives. Humans must be taken out of the process; automation and design-for-manufacturing are new priorities. Yield and losses must be addressed, costly processes must be attacked, and a three-order-of-magnitude increase in productivity must be scaled, all at the same time.

This talk spotlights some commonality in the challenges presented by the diverse applications the photonics industry is pursuing. It turns out there are not just processes, tools, and substrates to borrow from semiconductor manufacturing, but lessons too. When dovetailed with novel technologies that address stubborn pain-points common to the manufacturing and testing of photonic devices of all sorts, the insights are enabling an industry that finds itself on the launching pad without a flight plan. Jordan closes with success stories from the emerging ecosystem and a look at the hopeful future we can now anticipate and work towards, together.

About the presenter
Scott Jordan is head of photonics for PI (Physik Instrumente) LP and is a PI fellow. A physicist with an MBA in finance/new ventures, Jordan has made multiple contributions to the fields of photonics alignment automation, precision motion control, and optimization technologies.