Performance and yield of pilot-line quantities of lithium niobate switches.

A large number of single-polarization 22x2 lithium niobate switches have been fabricated for use in a bit serial optical computer. The switches come six to a package and have a single drive voltage of less than 5 volts, insertion loss less than 5 dB, and crosstalk less than -20 dB. At ten chips per 3-inch wafer, a lot of six wafers yield as many as 360 switches, making packaging and testing far more costly than chip fabrication. After one die per wafer passed acceptance testing, the rest of the dice were packaged in commercially-made Cu-alloy DIP's without further testing. Standard single-mode fibers were attached twelve at a time using Si-V-groove chips. Exercising our process by making chips in modest volume leads us to conclude that lithium niobate devices are made with a manufacturable process that can be tuned to provide a high yield of packaged devices at a cost comparable to other photonic products.