The Silicon Photonics Design Course is a comprehensive program that covers the entire process of developing a functional Silicon Photonics chip – from ideation to characterization.

The course explains how to transform a photonic circuit concept into a functional chip, including schematic design, circuit simulation, layout, routing, and interactive design rule checking.

During the program, participants have the opportunity to create a design that will be fabricated in the cleanroom facilities of UGent. The design will then be characterized, after which the results will be shared with the participants.

Purpose and scope of the course

The specialist design course in Silicon Photonics is offered for researchers and engineers with already a basic understanding of photonic integrated circuits. The course focuses on the process to translate a photonic circuit idea into a working chip, going from schematic design and circuit simulation to layout, routing and interactive design rule  checking. We look into best design practices and overall methodologies for organizing a design flow. As part of the course, the participants get the opportunity to actually tape-out a design that will be fabricated with an e-beam prototyping service and characterized. The measured data will be provided to the participants for post-fabrication analysis.

Key features of the course:

  • Achieve mastery in Silicon Photonics integrated circuit design
  • Full coverage of circuits, components, simulation, layout, tape-outs, …
  • Five days hands-on design lab going all the way from idea to PIC
  • Get your Silicon Photonics design fabricated and have it characterized
Schedule

MONDAY 7 April

BASIC CONCEPTS AND DESIGN FLOW 

09:00 to 12:30 

  • Introduction to the course 
  • Introduction to photonic ICs, silicon photonics 
  • Hands-on: Basics of Jupyter notebooks, Python 
  • Hands-on: Constructing circuits

13:30 to 17:00 

  • Design flow of silicon Photonic ICs 
  • Parametric cells (PCells) and custom layout 
  • Introducing the tape-outs and PDKs 
  • Hands-on: Exploring the PDKs and the PICAZZO library 
  • Hands-on: Setting up the project 
  • Hands-on: Custom Layout and Design Rule Checking  

TUESDAY 8 April

BUILDING BLOCKS AND SIMULATION 

09:00 to 12:30

  • Waveguides and building blocks 
  • Hands-on: Waveguides: dispersion, non-linearity , sensitivity 
  • Hands-on: Building blocks 

13:30 to 17:00 

  • Component design and electromagnetic simulation 
  • Hands-on: Simulations and optimizations 

Evening Activity (Food provided) 

  • Using Lean techniques in a Fabless environment 
  • Hands-on: Playing the “Fab game” 

WEDNESDAY 9 April

CIRCUITS AND FILTERS 

09:00 to 12:30 

  • Circuit simulation and models (frequency domain and time domain) 
  • Optical Wavelength Filters: Interferometers and Ring resonators 
  • Hands-on: Circuit simulation 
  • Hands-on:  Wavelength filters 

13:30 to 17:00 

  • Optical Wavelength Filters (continued): AWGs and echelle gratings 
  • Programmable Photonics 
  • Hands-on:  Wavelength filters, Programmable Photonics 

Evening Activity (Food provided) 

  • Organizing your design team
  • Design of Experiment 
  • Hands-on - Idea-generation for project designs 

THURSDAY 10 April

(DESIGN FOR) MANUFACTURING 

09:00 to 12:30 

  • CMOS Process Technology (for photonics) 
  • Hands-on: project work 

13:30 to 16:00 

  • Design for Manufacturability 
  • Variability and parasitics 
  • Hands-on: Tape-out process and design verification 
  • Hands-on: Photonic parasitics 
  • Hands-on: Variability analysis   

After 16:30: Social activity - visit to the “Castle of the Counts” 

18:30 onwards: The Last Supper 

FRIDAY 11 April 2024

PROJECT DESIGN AND DATA ANALYSIS 

09:00 to 12:30 

  • The Silicon Photonics ecosystem and Applications 
  • Hands-on: Project Work and Exercises 

13:30 to 16:00 

  • Analysis of measurement data  
  • Hands-on: Data analysis and parameter extraction  
  • Present your project idea 
  • Wrap up.

register

Practical information

When?

07-11 April 2025
08AM - 17PM GMT+2

Where

iGent Tower,
Technologypark-Zwijnaarde 126,
9052 Ghent (Belgium)

Fee
  • University students and ePIXfab members: € 950
  • Others: € 2400

(not including ticketing fees)

register

Partners

 
 

Professor Wim Bogaerts