Abstract

The effective exploitation of optoelectronic devices will depend upon the availability of interfacing and assembly techniques capable of providing precision and ruggedness at low cost. Photonic devices make very severe demands in this respect: integrated optical devices are alredy being produced in the laboratory that require up to 32 single mode optical fiber connections and several tens of electrical bonds, while two-dimensional optical processing structures such as spatial light modulators may require thousands of electrical connections. Mechanical tolerances of 1 xm or less are often required in order to achieve acceptable optical fiber/integrated optics coupling loss and this precision must be maintained under a wide range of environmental conditions. The flip-chip bonding technique is capable of achieving this very high precision and ruggedness, while eliminating precise micromanipulation operations during final device assembly: it is accordingly a very promising approach for photonic device assembly.

© 1991 Optical Society of America