The thermal management of Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) poses a few challenges at the packaging level.
The integration of a PIC with a proper holder provides mechanical support and electrical interconnection, as well
as spreading of the heat generated during PIC operation. This study proposes and evaluates the thermal behavior
of silicon and diamond holders and estimates the impact of integrating them with PICs as a packaged system; to
this end, the thermal profile of a PIC with distributed feedback lasers mounted on silicon or diamond holders was
simulated for different power levels using ANSYS Mechanical software. The impact of the epoxy resin used to
mount the PIC on the holder and the thermal crosstalk between the active components were also evaluated. Based
on steady-state thermal analysis, when the PIC is assembled via wire bonding, the replacement of the silicon
holder with a diamond holder brings only a marginal advantage. The choice of epoxy has a larger impact on the
maximum PIC temperature and the thermal crosstalk between active components. Choosing a large-thermal conductivity-value epoxy is thus a mandatory requirement in order to guarantee the proper thermal management of PICs and their corresponding holders.