We present the design, fabrication, and characterization of a grating for coupling between a single mode silica fiber and the TE mode in a silicon photonic waveguide on a silicon on insulator (SOI) substrate. The grating is etched completely through the silicon device layer, thus permitting the fabrication of through-etched surface coupled silicon nanophotonic circuits in a single lithography step. Furthermore, the grating is apodized to match the diffracted wave to the mode profile of the fiber. We experimentally demonstrate a coupling efficiency of 35% with a 1 dB bandwidth of 47 nm at 1536 nm on a standard SOI substrate. Furthermore, we show by simulation that with an optimized buried oxide thickness, a coupling efficiency of 72% and a 1 dB bandwidth of 38 nm at 1550 nm is achievable. This is, to our knowledge, the highest simulated coupling efficiency for single-etch TE-mode grating couplers. In particular, simulations show that apodizing a conventional periodic through-etched grating decreases the back-reflection into the waveguide from 21% to 0.1%.

A new kind of visible‐blind organic thin‐film material, consisting of a polymeric matrix with a high concentration of embedded 3‐hydroxyflavone (3HF) dye molecules, that absorbs UV light and emits green light is presented. The thin films can be grown on sensitive substrates, including flexible polymers and paper. Their suitability as photonic active components photonic devices is demonstrated.

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A novel low-temperature wafer-level vacuum packaging process is presented. The process uses plastically deformed gold rings as sealing structures in combination with flux-free soldering to provide the bond force for a sealing wafer. This process enables the separation of the sealing and the bonding functions both spatially on the wafer and temporally in different process steps, which results in reduced areas for the sealing rings and prevents outgassing from the solder process in the cavity. This enables space savings and yields improvements. We show the experimental result of the hermetic sealing. The leak rate into the packages is determined, by measuring the package lid deformation over 10 months, to be lower than 3.5 × 10−13 mbar l s−1, which is suitable for most MEMS packages. The pressure inside the produced packages is measured to be lower than 10 mbar.

We report on dye-based photonic sensing systems that are fabricated and packaged at waferscale. The realized dye-based photonic sensors include an environmental NO2 sensor and a sunlight ultraviolet light (UV) A+B sensor. For the first time luminescent organic nanocomposite thin-films