Photonic wire bonding: connecting nanophotonic circuits across chip boundaries

Photonic integration has witnessed tremendous progress over the last years, and chip-scale transceiver systems with terabit/s data rates have come into reach. However, as on-chip integration density increases, a technological breakthrough is considered indispensable to cope with the associated off-chip connectivity challenges. Here we report on the concept of photonic wire bonding, where transparent waveguide wire bonds are used to bridge the gap between nanophotonic circuits located on different chips. We demonstrate fabrication of three-dimensional freeform photonic wire bonds, and we experimentally confirm their viability for broadband low-loss coupling and multi-terabit/s data transmission.

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