Automated, deep reactive ion etching free fiber coupling to nanophotonic devices

Rapid development in integrated optoelectronic devices and quantum photonic architectures creates a need for optical fiber to chip coupling with low losses. Here we present a fast and generic approach that allows temperature stable self-aligning connections of nanophotonic devices to optical fibers. We show that the attainable precision of our approach is equal to that of DRIE-process based couplings. Specifically, the initial alignment precision is $1.2\pm 0.4μm$, the average shift caused by mating $<0.5μm$, which is in the order of the precision of the concentricity of the employed fiber, and the thermal cycling stability is $<0.2μm$. From these values the expected overall alignment offset is calculated as $1.4 \pm 0.4μm$. These results show that our process offers an easy to implement, versatile, robust and DRIE-free method for coupling photonic devices to optical fibers. It can be fully automated and is therefore scalable for coupling to novel devices for quantum photonic systems.

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