Eindhoven University of Technology gets production line for photonics test chips

Eindhoven University of Technology is getting a production line for photonic integrated circuits. Research facilities and companies will have access to the facility, which should significantly reduce production and R&D costs.

The production facility will be located in the NanoLab@TU/e cleanroom of Eindhoven University of Technology. It concerns the front-end process for the production of photonic integrated circuits, or pics for short, on wafers. European companies can also use the high-end equipment in the cleanroom.

There are already production lines for companies that work with photonic chips, but they are slow and suffer a large failure, according to Eindhoven University of Technology. The line for test chips to be set up now should significantly reduce the costs and time for making new products. The idea is to put pics from different companies on a single wafer to keep costs down.

The production line is part of the Oip4nwe project, which involves an investment of 14 million. Eindhoven University of Technology works with twelve partners on the production line. In addition to the Eindhoven branch, the project includes two other locations. A back-end production line for beamforming and light coupling optics will be built at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland, is getting a production line for the assembly of fiber optic connections and electronics. According to TU/e, all steps require nanoscale precision to prevent product defects.

The University of Twente and the Novio Tech Campus in Nijmegen also focus on the production of photonic chips. Photonics is expected to take off in a big way. The use of light instead of electrical signals enables significant energy savings and speed gains in the long run.