Building a European industrial supply chain for SOI- and SiN-based silicon photonics, including heterogeneous integration to support emerging markets

photonixFAB brings together key European photonics and semiconductor players, to establish a strong and sovereign European supply chain for silicon photonics.

The consortium leverages the volume capacity of X-FAB, the European More-than-Moore foundry, and addresses the work program with six key objectives: (1) Transferring IMEC's world-renowned silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform to X-FAB, to achieve industrial manufacturing capacity.

The SOI platform addresses a variety of high-speed and sensing applications. (2) Extending the industrial manufacturing capability of LIGENTEC's silicon nitride (SiN) technology at X-FAB, to become the industry standard for SiN photonics.

The low-loss, and broad transparency of SiN are perfect for sensing, quantum computing, amongst others. (3) Increasing maturity of heterogeneous integration with SMART Photonics' Indium Phosphide (InP) active components such as lasers, modulators and detectors. These components are integrated on top of the SOI and SiN platforms by transfer-printing.

This is an X-FAB associated technology, forming a key innovation differentiator for photonixFAB.

The leading European RTOs, IMEC and CEA, are supporting photonixFAB with various technologies, developed in Horizon Europe activities, such as prototype transfer-printing, LiNbO3 modulators and Ge detectors on SiN. (4) Strengthening the European ecosystem with design automation (Luceda), innovative packaging solutions (PHIX), and increased testing capabilities. (5) Demonstrating the viability of the new supply chain and technologies through six application-oriented demonstrators in a wide array of markets. (6) Setting up pilot line and multi-project wafer access to serve innovation by start-ups, SMEs and large entities, and opening photonixFAB for direct feedback on competitiveness and capabilities.

Thereby the relationships between the supply chain partners and prospective end-users, as well as between the photonics and the ECS worlds will be strengthened.