An Optical Engine with both EIC and PIC Embedded in Mold Compound in FOWLP

With the increasing demand for data capacity, both pluggable and Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) require higher bandwidth. Optical Engines (OE) which perform conversion between electrical and optical signals play a critical role in optical communication systems. In this work, we proposed a cost-effective OE package in mold-first Fan-Out Wafer Level Package (FOWLP) with both Electrical IC (EIC) and Photonic IC (PIC) chips embedded in mold compound. Flip chip process and Through Mold Via (TMV) are eliminated in the proposed OE package. Two RDL layers in OE package are for the signal routings between EIC and PIC, and for the OE I/O fan-out to package substrate through C4 bumps. The EIC-PIC and OE I/O interconnects are characterized in both frequency and time domain with good performance proving the OE package's capabilities to support 224 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\text{Gbps}/\lambda$</tex> PAM4 signals.