InPulse to Accelerate PIC Development in Europe
InPulse is a pilot project that will offer access to the latest production technology for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on indium phosphide to startups with promising ideas, but no access to PIC manufacturing facilities. The pilot project will enable startups to focus on innovative PIC product development rather than the technologically complex task of fabrication. Launched in January 2019, InPulse is led by Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), includes 16 European partners, and is receiving €14 million in funding from the European Commission.
The InPulse pilot line project will offer new-entrant companies direct access to state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on indium phosphide. This will enable the development of products for a wide range of new markets. Courtesy of Florian Lemaitre/Eindhoven University of Technology.
The pilot production line of InPulse will give PIC startups the opportunity to develop their concepts into prototypes and move the prototypes into pilot production, without the need for their own fabrication or production knowledge. The InPulse project partners will create manufacturing-grade process design kits that will serve as the automated link from the design to the production, testing, and packaging processes. The methods used will be scalable in volume.
The first phase of work will focus on making the technology more robust and putting the business processes in place for accelerated development programs. In the second stage of the project, some 30 new products will be developed to demonstrate the pilot line’s capability. For this phase of the project, the InPulse consortium is looking for additional companies and designers who want to take their ideas and designs to pre-production.
In addition to TU/e, the project partners of InPulse are AMIRES, Aarhus University, Bright Photonics, European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC), ficonTEC Service, Fraunhofer HHI, III-V Lab, Mellanox Technologies, Photon Design, Synopsys, Smart Photonics, Technobis Fibre Technologies, Tyndall National Institute, VLC Photonics, and VPIphotonics. The project builds on the work of the Joint European Platform for Photonic Integration of Components and Circuits (JePPIX.eu), which is already offering PIC prototyping services.
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