High-Speed Silicon Photonics Testing & Characterization Facility

Our Silicon Photonics Testing and Characterization Facility provides comprehensive electrical, optical, and electro-optical characterization of silicon photonic devices. The facility currently supports high-speed measurements up to 50 GHz for wafer-level and packaged device characterization.
The laboratory is equipped with FormFactor semi-automatic and fully automatic 8-inch wafer probe stations, enabling precise and repeatable wafer-level testing of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and high-speed optoelectronic devices. Advanced instrumentation from Keysight Technologies, including a Lightwave Component Analyzer (LCA), Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG), and Real-Time Oscilloscope (RTO), enables comprehensive DC, RF, optical, and electro-optical characterization.
The facility supports both grating-coupled and edge-coupled optical interfacing, allowing flexible characterization of a wide range of silicon photonic devices and integrated photonic platforms.

Current Capabilities

• High-speed electro-optical characterization up to 50 GHz
• Wafer-level testing of 8-inch silicon photonic wafers
• Semi-automatic and fully automatic wafer probing
• Small-signal frequency response and bandwidth measurements
• Time-domain characterization using high-speed arbitrary waveform generation and real-time signal acquisition
• Eye-diagram and high-speed data transmission measurements
• Electrical, optical, and electro-optical characterization of photodiodes, modulators, waveguides, and photonic integrated circuits (PICs)

Facility Upgrade (Coming Soon)

The facility is currently being upgraded to support 110 GHz electrical and electro-optical characterization. The upgraded platform will include state-of-the-art instrumentation for:

• Characterization up to 110 GHz
• 120 Gbaud Bit Error Rate Tester (BERT) for high-speed serial link testing
• Next-generation high-speed Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG)
• Ultra-high-bandwidth Real-Time Oscilloscope (RTO)
• Advanced PAM4 and NRZ signal generation and analysis
• High-speed transmitter and receiver characterization for silicon photonics, co-packaged optics, and optical interconnect applications

With this upgrade, the facility will provide one of the most advanced silicon photonics testing infrastructures in the region, supporting research and development in optical communications, microwave photonics, datacenter interconnects, AI/ML hardware, and emerging integrated photonic technologies.