RJR at PIC International: Advancing Photonics Packaging Solutions

Networking and exhibits at PIC International 2024 in Brussels.

Technical presentation during PIC International 2024 focused on 5G advancements.

On April 8th and 9th Sven Knippscheer (Director of Sales) and Marco Koelink (Business Development Manager - Europe) visited the PIC International Conference in Brussels Belgium. This event coincides with a Compound Semiconductor and Power Electronics conference. The venue was the Sheraton Airport Brussels Hotel. 

This was the 10th consecutive time the show was organized, and it’s become one of the largest European conferences in photonics next to the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC), The Laser World of Photonics (bi-annual) and the young but growing PIC Summit. This PIC International Conference  was visited by a large representation of the full European photonics ecosystem with some Asian and American visitors, in total around 700-800 people. There were visitors and exhibitors from photonics design houses, foundries, assembly and test houses, equipment manufacturers for processing, assembly and testing, IDMs, industry trade organizations and more. 

It was for RJR, mainly a network event where we could showcase our technology and increase the awareness of our air-cavity plastic packaging solutions for photonics. We talked to representatives of three trade organizations: OPTICA, EPIC and PhotonDelta. OPTICA hosted a few months ago a webinar on photonics packaging and RJR presented an elevator pitch on our packaging technology which was well received. We talked to PhotonDelta and they invited RJR to join their annual roadmap discussions at the PIC Summit event to share our insights on package developments for photonics. We briefly talked to EPIC and showed them our demo kit. 

We met with assembly houses to discuss market trends, opportunities for deeper collaboration, and expected volumes across various application areas. While photonics is experiencing rapid growth, there remains limited awareness of scalable, high-reliability packaging solutions. With RJR’s strong foundation in semiconductor packaging, sharing our expertise can help the photonics industry recognize the advantages of high-reliability, high-volume air-cavity plastic packaging. This will be an important topic for us to address in the near future. 

The absence of packaging technology was also evident in the content of the conference presentations. Over 90% of all presentations were focused on front-end design, manufacturing and testing. There were very few presentations on packaging although the need for cost-efficient volume solutions was mentioned in several presentations. At the end of the conference, there was an interesting panel session led by Jon Pugh from OPTICA entitled “Accelerating the Adoption of Advanced Photonic Integrated Circuits Using Design Standardization in PIC Packaging“. The panel had representatives from Ficontec (assembly equipment manufacturer), PHIX (assembly house), IMEC (R&D institute) and Photonics Foundry (assembly house). In the end it was concluded that standardization does not precede mass production by defining standards up front. It follows mass production as the opportunities for high volume applications arise in the market. It requires the need for quick adaptation from the packaging industry to tailor to the needs that these specific application areas will require and ramp up quickly into mass production. This is exactly what RJR can offer. 

Finally, we met with several other stakeholders that showed interest in our technology. In the coming weeks we will follow up on these opportunities and introduce RJR’s unique capabilities to them.