In collaboration with academic and commercial partners from across the Northeast, AIM Photonics and Cornell University’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering will lead research efforts on the Quantum Ultra-broadband Photonic Integrated Circuits and Systems (QUPICS) project through the Northeast Regional Defense Technology (NORDTECH) Hub. The project, supported by ~$8.5M in expected funding, will focus primarily on the development of an accessible 300-mm foundry fabrication platform for quantum photonic technologies extending from optical wavelengths in the UV through the IR. QUPICS is among four major NORDTECH projects recently selected for funding by the Department of Defense (DoD) that aim to significantly boost microelectronics manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. Funded by the DoD, the QUPICS project aims to develop an accessible 300-mm foundry fabrication platform for quantum photonic technologies. Courtesy of AIM Photonics. Integrated systems in the UV-IR broad wavelength range are critical for enabling a variety of photonics-heavy quantum systems and applications such as sensing, networking, next generation computing, navigation, secure communications, and drug discovery. The QUPICS team includes experts from the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y.; Columbia University; NIST-Gaithersburg; Rochester Institute of Technology; Quantinuum; TOPTICA Photonics, Inc.; Xanadu; and Yale University. The team will address the foundry gap of tuning across the UV-IR spectrum of broadband for experimental use in electro-optic devices with multi-metal layer electrical functionality and laser capabilities into a single broadly available chip-based system. In future iterations, the QUPICS platform will be available for multi-project wafer runs for joint development opportunities. “QUPICS has the unique promise to deliver a mature and broadly accessible fabrication platform supporting atomic and photonic quantum systems, which we will develop and leverage for the trapped-ion systems we are working on at Cornell,” said Karan Mehta, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University, and QUPICS co-principal investigator. The project is also expected to enhance AIM Photonics’ research in silicon photonics by extending the Institute’s current capabilities in prototyping and deployment of quantum systems, which are specifically tailored to the requirement of QUPICS. Successive build offerings and process design kits will facilitate experiments in QUPICS devices throughout the program. The multi-project wafer runs will be offered outside the project team to help research groups at national labs, government agencies, and a range of commercial organizations pursing quantum computing, communication, sensing, and related photonics applications.
