Silicon Photonics Testing for AI Data Center Scaling
Silicon photonics is moving from design lab to fab floor. As AI infrastructure scales toward multi-terabit optical interconnects, foundries and SiPh manufacturers face a new challenge: sustaining device performance and yield not at prototype volumes, but across full wafer runs. That requires testing built for production — not adapted from it.
For Scale, Speed, and Yield Control
Silicon photonic devices must deliver consistent optical performance across hundreds of dies per wafer, wafer after wafer. Variations in waveguide geometry, coupling alignment, or etch depth on the order of tens of nanometers translate directly into insertion loss, phase error, and bandwidth penalty. At low volumes, these deviations are manageable. At HVM, they define yield — and profitability.
Challenges in Silicon Photonics Testing & Inspection
Silicon photonic devices must maintain tight optical performance across densely integrated structures, where nanometer-scale variations translate directly into insertion loss, coupling inefficiency, and bandwidth penalties. Ensuring yield and scalability requires wafer-level visibility into both structural and optically active defects.
Wafer-Scale Yield Without Throughput Compromise
Functional testing of PIC devices at wafer scale has historically required active fiber alignment — slow, iterative, and incompatible with production line economics. As SiPh foundries scale output, the testing step becomes a throughput bottleneck unless it is fully automated and passively aligned.
Root Cause Visibility Across the Process Window
When yield drops, identifying whether the source is a lithography deviation, etch non-uniformity, or coupling misalignment requires more than pass/fail data. Without in-circuit optical visibility, process engineers are left reverse-engineering failures from output measurements — extending debug cycles and delaying corrective action.
Advanced Packaging Escapes Are Costly
Silicon photonic wafers are increasingly integrated into co-packaged optics, optical engines, and chiplet-based architectures. Optical defects or yield outliers that escape wafer-level testing propagate into packaged modules where rework is expensive or impossible. Pre-bond inspection is the last low-cost intervention point.
InZiv’s Solutions
InZiv addresses silicon photonics inspection across the full production lifecycle — from process development and failure analysis to high-volume wafer-level functional testing.
Silicon Photonics Production Testing
Glide-SiPh
Automated wafer-scale functional testing for silicon photonics — built for the throughput demands of high-volume manufacturing.
Passive alignment technology couples to wafer edge-facets in seconds, with no active feedback loop, no device damage, and no optical recalibration between cycles. Supports 200mm and 300mm wafers, FOUP-compatible, with multi-channel optical and electrical characterization in a single automated pass.
Failure Analysis & Process Control
Omni-SiPh
Near-field optical probing that reveals exactly where light travels inside your waveguide — not just what comes out the other end.
When a device underperforms, Omni-SiPh pinpoints the location of optical loss, coupling deviation, or design mismatch — without damaging the device. Purpose-built for new product ramps, process window characterization, and root cause analysis at die and wafer level.
Why It Matters
Yield in silicon photonics is not a binary problem. Devices that pass basic continuity tests can still carry optical loss, coupling inefficiency, or wavelength instability that degrades system performance after integration. Catching these at wafer level — before dicing, before packaging, before shipment — is the difference between profitable ramp and costly rework.
As SiPh transitions to foundry-scale production, the economics of inspection shift too. The cost of a missed defect compounds with every downstream step. Wafer-level testing that combines throughput with real optical insight is no longer a process engineering nicety — it is a yield management requirement.
Technical Specifications
The table below outlines representative performance targets used to illustrate inspection challenges; actual requirements vary by application and system design.
| Parameter | Example Requirement | How InZiv Addresses It |
|---|---|---|
| Wafer formats | 200mm, 300mm production wafers | Glide-SiPh supports full-wafer automated stepping across both formats; FOUP compatible |
| Device Types | Edge-coupled and grating-coupled PICs | Proprietary deep-trench FAU and angled probe configurations handle both architectures |
| Coupling speed & efficiency | 2 seconds per device, no active alignment | Passive alignment technology — no hexapod, no iterative tuning, no recalibration |
| Test coverage | Insertion loss, pass/fail, yield mapping | Multi-channel optical and electrical characterization |
| Failure analysis | In-waveguide optical loss localization | Omni-SiPh maps propagation inside the waveguide — not inferred from port measurements |
| Probe access | Buried and deep-trench structures | Custom deep-trench probes reaching down to 30µm in width trenches, and large Z-scan range |
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See InZiv in Action
The future of electro-optics begins with InZiv.
We would be happy to schedule a confidential call to discuss your specific needs and answer your questions. We can also provide a confidential demonstration of InZiv’s testing and inspection technology on your sample.
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