The Growing PICs Sector’s Reliance on Automation and Wafer-Level Integration in Manufacturing

Jan 12, 2023 Forecasts for the integrated photonic device market promise growth in virtually all of the application end markets in which the technology offers solutions. What is perhaps missing from this picture is a discussion of the strategic manufacturing developments that need to occur before the PIC industry can achieve the device volumes required to meet the forecasted demand.

Certainly, to meet demand in some end markets, the flexible manufacture and test of various PIC devices will require ever higher levels of process automation, as well as wafer-level approaches to component integration. Vahrenkamp provides a glimpse into some of the technology and automation approaches either already being utilized or currently being adopted at ficonTEC to address these challenges.

***This presentation premiered during the 2023 Photonics Spectra Conference. For more information on Photonics Media conferences, visit events.photonics.com.

About the presenter

Torsten Vahrenkamp holds a degree in applied laser technologies from the University of Applied Sciences Emden in Germany, completed in 1998. He also spent time at the Institute of Laser Technology at Emden and at the University of Loughborough in England, constructing a fully automated laser microstructure lithography system. Vahrenkamp developed a process to generate in-glass diffractive optics using ion exchange processes — for example, for the generation of waveguides in glass. He co-founded ficonTEC in 2001 and is the company’s CEO. FiconTEC’s goal, then and now, is to provide fully and semiautomated assembly and test solutions for the photonics industry.