Outstanding Paper Award of "Light: Advanced Manufacturing"

July 2024: A study on 3D-printing for advanced photonic system assembly has been honored as an outstanding paper by the publishing journal Light: Advanced Manufacturing. The paper introduces various approaches to scalable photonic packaging and system assembly using 3D-printed facet-attached microlenses (FaML). Traditional methods for chip-to-chip and fiber-to-chip connections often rely on active alignment techniques, which are both technically complex and costly. This has posed a major challenge to the commercial adoption of PIC-based solutions. In contrast, the reported FaML approach offers a promising alternative by enabling passive assembly techniques as the microlenses relax alignment tolerances. These microlenses can be precisely printed onto the facets of optical components using multi-photon lithography, allowing for the shaping of emitted beams through custom-designed refractive or reflective surfaces. To highlight the versatility of the FaML approach a series of experiments were conducted, including pluggable fiber-chip interface connections and the combination of PICs with discrete micro-optical elements like polarization beam splitters. 
The recognition of this paper as outstanding underscores its significant impact on advancing scalable photonic system assembly.