News: Optoelectronics
28 January 2020
CompoundTek launches Southeast Asia’s first silicon photonics testing services hub in Singapore
Singapore-based silicon photonic (SiPh) foundry services provider CompoundTek Pte Ltd, has launched its maiden SiPh test facility, believed to be Southeast Asia’s first site offering production and engineering test services accessible to commercial industry players. The testing service is independent of CompoundTek’s foundry services, enabling non-CompoundTek customers the opportunity to leverage the open-testing platform.
Housing SiPh on-wafer testing and equipment, instrument controls and test methodologies, the facility is custom-built by CompoundTek and its partners. The hub caters to the development of solutions targeting data-transmission capabilities sought after in data centers, interconnectivity, light ranging & detection (LiDAR), smart sensors and other high-growth applications that are expected to see high-volume production over the next five years, driven largely by advances in smart city applications.
Established at CompoundTek’s Jurong East International Business Park office, the test facility is staffed by a resident SiPh test team, bringing into the technology ecosystem proven talents with international expertise in both manual and automatic silicon photonics testing on either 8” or 12” wafers.
The cleanroom is accredited as class 1000/10000, with its equipment designed to achieve fast and reproducible optical coupling, including 6-axis probe-position optimization and polarization alignment, wafer probing for conventional DC and RF electrical testing in the optical domain, and is capable of supporting both the O- and C-band. The facility will also enable the testing of electro-optical components up to 67GHz and is suitable for electro-optical components for 400Gbit/s or higher.
“With the added on-wafer-level automated SiPh optical/electrical/RF testing facility, customers will be able to limit packaging costs to good dies (known-good-die) only and avoid module packaging-level testing turn-around time losses,” says chief operating officer K.S. Ang. “This complements our rapidly growing solutions portfolio designed to drive mass-production volume with fast cycle-time,” he adds. “Offered alongside our world-class commercial foundry capabilities, we are able to accelerate customers’ time-to-market to subsequently meet their commercialization goals.”
Keysight, FormFactor and CompoundTek jointly develop on-wafer testing for integrated photonics
