Description: In this project, active III-V photonic components and passive silicon photonic (SiPh) circuits are integrated with CMOS electronic circuits. The modular MEMS-Electronic-Photonic Heterogeneous Integration (MEPHI) platform will make use of the high performance of the individual components and integrate (1) MEMS tunable VCSEL with high-index-contrast grating (HCG) mirrors, (2) photodetectors, (3) Si photonic waveguides, couplers, and interferometers, (4) high-efficiency vertical optical coupler between III-V and Si waveguides, and (5) CMOS circuits for frequency control and temperature compensation. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed MEPHI platform, a frequency-modulated continuous-wave light detection and ranging (FMCW LIDAR) source will be developed.

The MEPHI process developed in this project aims at a modular approach in fabrication of integrated, combined electronic and photonic circuits. An integrated 3D LIDAR source is developed in order to demonstrate the capabilities of the MEPHI process. Such a compact chip-scale LIDAR source is expected to revolutionize 3D-imaging in mobile applications, such as for autonomous vehicles, 3D cartography, gesture based computing, gaming, etc.

Figure 1: Schematic of MEPHI device.

1. Niels Quack, Sangyoon Han, Ming C. Wu, Wafer Level AlGe Eutectic Bonding for MEMS-Electronic-Photonic Heterogeneous Integration, International Nano-Optoelectronics Workshop, UC Berkeley and Stanford University, CA, USA, 7-15 August 2012. PDF
2. Alejandro Grine, Niels Quack, Karen Grutter, Tristan O. Rocheleau, Jeremy Huang, Clark T.-C. Nguyen, Ming C. Wu, Wafer-scale silica optomechanical oscillators with low threshold power and low phase noise for monolithic optical frequency references, IEEE Optical MEMS & Nanophotonics Conference, Banff, Alberta, Canada, 6 - 9 August 2012.
3. Karen E. Grutter, Alejandro Grine, Myung-Ki Kim, Niels Quack, Tristan Rocheleau, Clark T.-C. Nguyen, and Ming C. Wu, A Platform for On-Chip Silica Optomechanical Oscillators with Integrated Waveguides, Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), San Jose, California, USA, 6-11 May 2012.
4. Niels Quack, Jeffrey B. Chou, Ming C. Wu, Self-aligned VCSEL-microlens scanner with large scan range, IEEE 25th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), Paris, France, 29 January - 2 February 2012, doi: 10.1109/MEMSYS.2012.6170272