TEGEMA Leverages PI Technology in Revolutionary Photonics Assembly Platform Partnership

Compared to microchips, the production of integrated photonic components is a decisive process step more complex: the coupling technology to connect optical fiber components. For example, individual glass fibers or glass fiber arrays, chips, VCSELs, lenses, diffractive elements or photodiodes. PI offers fast, high-precision positioning systems for this manufacturing step with special firmware routines built into the system controllers. These are already used worldwide for the development of photonic components and are also used in pilot production.

"Many customers request a much higher level of automation, for example when handling photonic chips or applying and curing adhesives," says Scott Jordan, Head of the photonics market segment at PI, and adds: "TEGEMA is an experienced system integrator that has yearlong experience with such questions."

Arno Thoer, Director project solutions at TEGEMA, is pleased about the cooperation with PI: "The assembly and packaging technology contributes to a considerable part to the total costs of photonic components. The already proven systems from PI form the heart of our platform concepts for the further automation of this process step. We want to contribute to speeding up this process considerably, minimizing the associated costs and thus helping the photonics industry to make a further breakthrough."

TEGEMA has developed a modular platform for the assembly of photonic devices, with a roughly ten times higher throughput than with currently available solutions. A first demo system has already been set up as a proof of concept. The assembly platform will be launched at the end of April 2020.