Photonic Integrated Circuits 1 (PIC1) - Online Course

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This six-week online edX course introduces students and industry professionals to the fabless design of silicon Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), using industry-leading Electronic Photonic Design Automation (EPDA) software tools. Registrants are guided through a step-by-step design sequence that culminates in the tape-out of an electro-optically active PIC chip that is suitable for fabrication by AIM Photonics Institute’s Multi-Project-Wafer (MPW) facility.

The course is structured around the design of a basic “transceiver” (fiber-coupler+modulator+detector). It begins with an overview of fabless PIC design and a review of passive Silicon Photonic devices (waveguides, bends, splitters/combiners and interferometers). Registrants are then walked through the process of designing the transceiver chip with a focus on the two primary active devices (electro-optic modulator and photodetector). The course emphasizes the creation of compact models of the devices in order to facilitate the flexible simulation and layout of arbitrary PIC chip designs. Specifically, registrants will acqui…