MIT FUTUR-IC develops optical couplers for sustainable microsystems

MIT-led FUTUR-IC announced progress developing electronic-photonic integrated microsystems, reporting three new optical “couplers” (evanescent, GRIN, and a 2023 DOE-supported coupler) and claiming the approach can enable data transmission from hundreds of terabits per second to greater than 1 petabit per second.

• Core technical announcement: FUTUR-IC has developed three optical couplers intended as the first optical equivalents of “solder bumps” to integrate photonics and electronics: the evanescent coupler (featured on the cover of Advanced Engineering Materials, “last year”), the graded index (GRIN) coupler (reported in the March 2026 issue of Journal of Physics: Photonics), and a third coupler reported in 2023 in Laser & Photonics Reviews (work supported by the DOE). FUTUR-IC was established in 2022 and is funded by the NSF Convergence Accelerator; progress was summarized in an April webinar titled “Shaping the Future of Semiconductors: Power, Performance, and Possibility,” sponsored by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and Startup Exchange.
• Value-chain and workforce actions: Under Value Chain Innovation, FUTUR-IC highlights the Earthster visual modeling tool to identify product-level energy and material hot spots; under Workforce, FUTUR-IC is launching an online course on semiconductor resource efficiency, gamified digital learning, problem-based learning, a summer academy, a hands-on bootcamp, and K-12 TED-Ed videos. The program notes the supply-chain immaturity for co-packaged optics and positions its work as relevant to packaging vendors, materials vendors, and data-center supply chains.