4th ePIXfab Silicon Photonics
Design Course
11-15 April 2022, Ghent University (Belgium)
Here you learn to make
your own
silicon photonics chips
What is covered in the course?
The Specialist Course on Silicon Photonics Design goes from ideation to characterization of a working silicon photonics chip.
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.
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. Based on these results, the design can be improved and submitted to a wafer-scale multi-project-wafer run of which the participants will receive the final chips.
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
Practical information
Course Instructor
Content of the course
From:9 AM to 12.30 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Introduction to the course |
| Introduction to photonic ICs and silicon photonics |
| Quick start: Photonic Circuit design |
| Hands-on: Basics of Jupyter notebooks, Python |
| Hands-on: Constructing circuits |
From 13:30 PM to 17:00 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Design flow of silicon Photonic ICs |
| Introducing the tape-outs and PDKs |
| Hands-on: Exploring the PDKs and the PICAZZO library |
| Hands-on: Setting up the project |
| Hands-on: Building blocks |
| Australian Silicon Photonics |
From 9:00 PM to 12:30 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Waveguides and building blocks |
| Hands-on: Waveguides: dispersion, non-linearity , sensitivity |
| Hands-on: Directional couplers and other building blocks |
From 13:30 AM to 17:00 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Component design and electromagnetic simulation |
| Hands-on: component designs, simulations and optimizations |
Evening Activity (Food provided – subject to COVID conditions)
- Using Lean techniques in a Fabless environment
- Hands-on: Playing the “Fab game”
From 09:00 AM to 12:30 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Parametric cells (PCells) and custom layout |
| Circuit simulation and models (frequency domain and time domain) |
| Hands-on: Circuit simulation |
| Hands-on: PCells , Layout and Models |
From 1:30 AM to 5:00 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Optical Wavelength Filters: Interferometers, AWGs, Echelle gratings and Rings |
| Hands-on: Wavelength filters |
Evening Activity (Food provided – subject to COVID conditions)
- Organizing your design flows and teams
- Design of Experiment
- Hands-on – Idea-generation for project designs
From 09:00 AM to 12:30 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Understanding the CMOS Process flow (for photonics) |
| Hands-on: Design Rule Checking |
From 1:30 AM to 4:00 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| 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:
- Visit to the “Castle of the Counts” (Subject to conditions)
18:30 onwards:
- The Last Supper
From 09:00 AM to 12:30 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| The Silicon Photonics ecosystem and Applications |
| Hands-on: Project Work and Exercises |
From 1:30 AM to 5:00 PM
| Topics |
|---|
| Analysis of measurement data |
| Hands-on: Data analysis and parameter extraction |
| Present your project idea |
| Wrap up |
Detailed program: DOWNLOAD
