Abstract

Revisiting the future All-Optical Network within its Transport, Switching and Access functionalities or considering the increasing demand for Datacommunications, it appears that a wide range of optoelectronic components with balanced performances and costs will be required. Concerning this balance, it has been recognised that package structures based on silicon boards might contribute to a generic and flexible technological approach. The more popular has been the flip-chip assembly of optoelectronic components on silicon boards with V-grooves in order to perform passive, and therefore cost-effective alignment with single mode fibers [1]. More recently [2,3,4,5,6], it has been proposed to extend this approach to silicon boards with integrated silica waveguides. This opens the way for the planar integration of several Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) [7, 81 that is, several monolitnically integrated optoelectronic circuits (figure 1). This approach can be considered as the photonic counterpart of the Multi-chip Module Integrated Circuits (MMICs) approach previously developed for electrical chips. These new photonic circuits might be therefore described as Multi-chips Photonic Integrated Devices (MPICs).

© 1996 Optical Society of America