Tools for Photonics in Integrated Circuit Design and Manufacturing\n

Tools for Photonics in Integrated Circuit Design and Manufacturing
Optical inspection, now the non-destructive, semiconductor process monitoring technique of choice, requires the solution of an inverse scattering problem to infer geometry from measured light. We have developed a new approach to accelerating this inverse scattering problem based on using parameterized model reduction. The problem of analyzing optical effects in wavelength-sized structures also arises for developers of integrated nanophotonics, which is emerging as an important new technology. Nanophotonic designers have very few available tools, and we are beginning a project to improve the situation. We are developing approaches that can be used to extract circuit-level models of photonic devices and are also developing new techniques for assessing the impact of roughness on the loss in photonic channels.