Thermal management of photonic integrated circuits: impact of holder material and epoxies.

The thermal management of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) poses a few challenges at the packaging level. The integration of a PIC with a proper holder provides mechanical support and electrical interconnection, as well as spreading of the heat generated during PIC operation. This study proposes and evaluates the thermal behavior of silicon and diamond holders and estimates the impact of integrating them with PICs as a packaged system; to this end, the thermal profile of a PIC with distributed feedback lasers mounted on silicon or diamond holders was simulated for different power levels using ANSYS Mechanical software. The impact of the epoxy resin used to mount the PIC on the holder and the thermal crosstalk between the active components were also evaluated. Based on steady-state thermal analysis, when the PIC is assembled via wire bonding, the replacement of the silicon holder with a diamond holder brings only a marginal advantage. The choice of epoxy has a larger impact on the maximum PIC temperature and the thermal crosstalk between active components. Choosing a large-thermal-conductivity-value epoxy is thus a mandatory requirement in order to guarantee the proper thermal management of PICs and their corresponding holders.