PIXEurope consortium to lead the European pilot line on advanced photonic integrated circuits
Within the framework of the European Chips Strategy, the so-called European Chips Act, the European Commission has announced the creation of PIXEurope, a new European pilot line for photonic chips that aims to offer cutting-edge technological platforms, transforming and transferring innovative and disruptive integrated photonics processes and technologies to accelerate their industrial adoption.
European sovereignty in integrated circuits
The objective is the creation of European-owned/made technology in a sector of capital importance for technological sovereignty and, therefore, for the creation and maintenance of the corresponding jobs in the Union.
The European Commission has selected the PIXEurope program as its 5th pilot line and has chosen the proposal led by ICFO, the Institute of Photonic Sciences (based in Barcelona), to coordinate it at the continental level.
The pilot line consortium also involves participating institutions from Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In addition to the EU funding the pilot line, local governments and knowledge institutions are investing public funding in the initiative. In the Netherlands, Economic Affairs are giving finance for the project.
The pilot line is co-financed by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service of the Government of Spain and supported by the Generalitat of Catalonia.
Every year, the needs of our digital society increase significantly, as evidenced by the global market for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) production, which is expected to grow by more than 400% over the next 10 years.
By the end of the decade, the global photonics market is expected to exceed 1,500 billion euros, a figure comparable to the entire annual gross domestic product of the Netherlands.
Remarkable growth
This remarkable growth is due to the prevailing need and demand for devices with applications in areas such as telecommunications and datacomm, artificial intelligence, image sensing, automotive and mobility, medicine and healthcare, environmental care, renewable energy, defence and security, and a wide range of consumer applications sectors.
The features and specifications required for such applications are facilitated through the combination of microelectronic chips and photonic chips. The former are responsible for information processing by manipulating electrons within circuits based on silicon and its variants, while the latter uses photons in the visible and infrared spectrum ranges in a wide variety of materials.
The Dutch contribution
In the Netherlands, 果冻传媒, along with the University of Twente and TNO, will be participating in the pilot line within the jointly founded Photonic Integration Technology Centre (PITC).
PITC brings together extensive experience in the research, development and industrialization of photonic components and complex integrated circuit platforms using silicon and indium phosphide technologies. The partners have played a key role in enabling a wide range of designers to create their own photonic integrated circuits.
Look ahead
Over the next 10 years and during the operational phase, the pilot line will boost the production capacity and innovation potential of European companies to a new level, allowing them to develop and manufacture prototypes of their products based on photonic chips.
It will also support research organizations in bridging the gap between the laboratory and the factory in exploiting novel scientific results and accelerating the commercialization of this research by supporting the creation of new start-ups.
In particular, the pilot line will contribute to the design and development of an optimized manufacturing chain, involving end-users and industry partners for the evaluation of production processes to be transferred to industrial scale, with the ultimate aim of creating a unique European PICs ecosystem, with open access services to the user, establishing itself as the first fully integrated open access PICs pilot line in the world.
Partners in PIXEurope
Kevin Williams, Chair of the Photonic Integration group at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands is particularly pleased that "PIXEurope will facilitate the wide adoption of advanced photonic integrated circuits produced using the standardised design kits and foundry processes pioneered in Europe. Advanced photonic chips will offer game changing improvements in speed, power-efficiency and precision."
In addition, Valerio Pruneri, ICREA Professor, ICFO Group Leader and Director of the pilot line, highlights that 鈥淧IXEurope is the first Photonic Chip Pilot Line in Europe that unifies diverse materials, processes, and integration techniques that will allow the development and demonstration of devices and systems for all applications where Photonics is a key technology.鈥�
About Chips JU
The European Commission鈥檚 Chips Joint Undertaking supports research, development, innovation, and future manufacturing capacities in the European semiconductor ecosystem. It was launched by the European Union Council Regulation No 2021/1085 and amended in September 2023 as part of the Chips for Europe Initiative. It confronts semiconductor shortages and strengthens Europe's digital autonomy, engaging a significant EU, national/regional and private industry funding of nearly 鈧�11 billion. The Chips JU is funded by the European Union, Chips JU Participating States and Private Members.
In April of 2024, the Chips JU announced the . Now, the PIC Pilot Line becomes the fifth to enter negotiations, in a key effort to strengthen capacity building and innovation in Europe. Aligned with the objectives of the Chips for Europe Initiative, this Pilot Line is expected to closely collaborate with the other Chips JU Pilot Lines (, , & ), and .
(Image: ICFO)
About 果冻传媒 and photonics
果冻传媒 belongs to the international top tier in the field of semiconductor research, with extensive research across dozens of research groups in electronic and photonic chip design, semiconductor materials and processes, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. These efforts are brought together in the recently established Future Chips Flagship.
Expertise in photonic integration focuses on process technologies for indium phosphide (InP) PICs and their wafer-scale heterogeneous integration with silicon and InP microelectronics. The Photonic Integration research group comprises 70 researchers and has played a pioneering role in the application of the Process Design Kit (PDK) enabled foundry platforms for photonic integration technologies, enabling one common process technology to be used for many circuit designs and applications.
Relevant spinoff companies include Effect Photonics, Smart Photonics, Microalign, and PhotonIP. Smart Photonics licenses key technologies to provide pureplay PIC foundry services, becoming the first company to provide PDKs for InP PICs.
果冻传媒 launched the first nanophotonic multi-project wafer (MPW) service in 2023 to include native lasers and amplifiers using its InP membrane on silicon (IMOS) technology.
果冻传媒 chairs the JePPIX platform of approximately twenty companies, aligning commercial design tools and foundry processes through interoperability homologation and training and managing the services developed in the JePPIX Pilot Line. 果冻传媒 also co-founded the Photonic Integration Technology Centre (PITC) with partners the University of Twente and TNO to support open innovation program lines with industry.
(Photo: Bart van Overbeeke)
