Ultra-Compact Photonic Bends Reduce Loss While Meeting Foundry Rules (Georgia Tech)
Ultra-Compact Photonic Bends Reduce Loss While Meeting Foundry Rules (Georgia Tech)
Georgia Tech researchers published an ultra-compact integrated photonic waveguide bend design method in Optics Letters, achieving low loss at an extremely small radius of 2.3 µm. The method introduces new contour constraints in a topology optimization framework, reducing sensitivity to manufacturing process variations while satisfying commercial foundry design rule checks, and has been experimentally validated.
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology published a technical paper titled “Low-loss ultra-compact photonic bends with enhanced fabrication tolerance for commercial foundry processes.”
Abstract Excerpt: “We present a methodology and experimentally validate it with the design of high-performance integrated photonic waveguide bends in extremely compact footprints (2.3 µm radius). The approach uses what we believe to be a novel contour constraint within a topology optimization framework to improve performance and reduce sensitivity to fabrication variability while ensuring compliance with commercial foundry design rule checks.”
Find the technical paper here. September 2026.
Wong, Joshua J., Robert P. Pesch, Archana Kaushalram, Jacob M. Hiesener, and Stephen E. Ralph. “Low-loss ultra-compact photonic bends with enhanced fabrication tolerance for commercial foundry processes.” Optics Letters 51, no. 18 (2026): 5185–5188. https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.611581
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