Looking to provide Europe with a state-of-the-art infrastructure to support the development and manufacture of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), the EU is investing €15.5million in an international consortium called PIXAPP, which will be led by Ireland’s Tyndall National Institute.

Professor Peter O’Brien, pictured, PIXAPP pilot line director and head of photonics packaging research at Tyndall, said: “The consortium involved in PIXAPP, has an unmatched record of excellence in delivering many world ‘firsts’ in PICs. We will establish ‘best in class’ PIC packaging technologies that are cost-effective and scalable to high volume manufacture. We will offer these technologies through a single easy access point at Tyndall called the Pilot Line Gateway.

“Furthermore, we plan to train and educate the photonics workforce of the future by creating a laboratory based training programme. This programme is a game-changer, not only for the European photonics industry but also for global photonics.”

Packaging PICs can represent up to 80% of the cost of photonics components, so is a critical area for industry. PIXAPP is the world’s first open access PIC assembly and packaging pilot line, combining an interdisciplinary team from Europe’s leading industrial and research organisations.

“In the past, it has been very expensive to manufacture high volumes of PICs, and more expensive and challenging again to package them,” said Jose Pozo, director of the European Photonics Industry Consortium. “This is creating a bottleneck for production, which is impacting the potential for growth in the photonics industry. I am confident that Tyndall will deliver market success for Europe and drive our competitiveness across the communications, medical, automotive, energy, safety and defence sectors globally.”

By: DocMemory
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