The Telecom sector is predicted to explode over the next few years, driven by data from IoT sensing solutions, games, autonomous driving, gaming and AI-technologies. Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) on Indium Phosphide (InP) will play a critical role in providing the superior functionality demanded. Today. only few companies can produce integrated chips but do so exclusively for their own vertically integrated production lines, making it impossible for many thousands of other companies in sensor and data technology to tap into this technology. SMART Photonics has developed a suite of world class functional photonic modules based on InP, which can be combined together as “building blocks”. It simplifies the design of photonic circuits and allows SMART complete flexibility to quickly build up functional PICs to meet any given application. SMART has calculated its specific obtainable market in the data&telecom and sensing markets of €350m by 2021 and €1.16bn by 2023 respectively. Two first customers are ready to enter volume manufacturing in 2019/2020. By 2023, SMART plans €210m revenues at a gross margin of 70% and employ 120 staff. The Phase 2 project will help industrialize the manufacturing processes and prepare for scale-up. The project is strategic to the company as it will develop the processes needed for reliable volume production, set-up a pilot line (1.000 wafers/year) and develop a Process Design Kit – a software tool – that will empower customers to design chips with custom functionality based on SMART’s technology platform. At the end of Phase 2 SMART will: • be positioned as the only independent foundry for InP PICs. • have achieved readiness necessary build a commercial scale facility at 20,000 wafers/year • have new building block capabilities allowing new applications in new, yet untargeted, markets SMART is run by an experienced team with deep technical and commercial semiconductor and photonics backgrounds.

Photonic integration (PI) is a new standard for providing cost effective and high-performance miniaturized optical systems for a wide range of applications. However, higher adoption of photonic IC-based products and services across a wide range of verticals still calls for several optimizations namely at the level of active material for the lasers, decrease of the overall waveguide loss and development of better predictive performance methodologies implemented in the Process Design Kits (PDK). EDIFY will overcome this challenges by providing cutting-edge training to young researchers on the emerging field of integrated photonics and its translation into circuit fabrication and commercialization. EDIFY will train three ESRs at two world-leading European academic institutions and four industrial companies, thus forming a strong interdisciplinary network between industry and technical sciences to overcome specific barriers of the integrated photonics sector. Skilled in a multidisciplinary background (i.e. photonics fundamentals, circuit design and dedicated software and nanofabrication modalities) EDIFY ESRs will jointly contribute for significant improvements in the performance, power consumption and predictive methodologies of current PICs technologies with direct impact in: data communications, fibre-tothe- home, fibre sensors, gas sensing, medical diagnostics, metrology and consumer photonics. The availability of professionals combining the EDIFY ESRs skills will directly fuel emerging PIC-based innovation and ensure its exploitation by the photonic industry. Importantly, with these emerging opportunities unique career opportunities will arise for the professionals involved in this technological step change in Photonic ICs segment.

INSPIRE aims to revolutionize photonic integrated circuit technology by combining two technologies, InP photonics and SiN photonics, in a single platform through wafer-scale micro-transfer printing technology. This platform will allow to combine high-performance III-V opto-electronic components (semiconductor optical amplifiers, high-speed phase modulators and photodetectors) operating in the C-band with the high-performance passive functionality of the SiN platform (high performance filters, 5dB/m waveguide loss), on 200mm wafers. The micro-transfer printing integration approach enables high-throughput integration of III-V devices on SiN photonic integrated circuits with better than 1 um alignment accuracy, resulting in high-performance, low-cost photonic integrated circuits. While being applicable in a wide range of mega-markets, the INSPIRE technology will be validated by three use cases: the case of a distributed fiber sensing readout unit based, the case of a microwave photonics RF pulse generator and a datacenter switch fabric. Compact models of the III-V opto-electronic components will be developed enabling designers to exploit this platform for a wide range of applications. INSPIRE will sustain Europe’s industrial leadership in photonics by combining the generic integrated foundry technology at the pioneering pure-play foundry SmartPhotonics, and the silicon photonics pioneer IMEC, with the micro-transfer printing technology at X-Celeprint, making this a world-first platform combining the strengths of all known PIC manufacturing platforms. It will also strengthen the European manufacturing base by developing and implementing processing steps that are key to removing expensive assembly steps in photonic IC based product realization. The methods will be developed for silicon nitride – indium phosphide integration. Since the optical coupling happens through a silicon intermediate layer the developed technology can be ported to silicon CMOS photonics as well.

The new technology envisioned in CIRCULIGHT will establish a breakthrough in Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) capabilities, with impact across a wide range of applications of high economic and societal value. It will lay the foundations of a new class of PICs which are highly functional, miniaturized and low power-consuming, as well as being manufacturable at low cost, thereby contributing significantly to environmental protection and related quality of life. The essential building block that will be created in this project is a truly integrated optical circulator, which protects active and passive integrated functions from each other, distributes light between them, and finally allows very large scale integration of photonic components within diversified PIC architectures. The practical realization of such a structure will be a world-first and a breakthrough in PIC technology. CIRCULIGHT technological decisive progress is based on magneto-optical (MO) nanoparticle-composite sol-gel material and on magneto-biplasmonic (MBP) effect, which will enable the monolithic insertion of circulators on any photonic platform. Within the project, a demonstration will be made on two of them, based on InP and Si respectively, operating at 1.3 or 1.5 µm. While PIC foundries rely on specific and independent technologies, our solution will bypass these specificities, thanks to a universal integration of functional materials. In addition, our interdisciplinary approach is based on the analysis of real world needs, feeding the co-creation of an exploitation roadmap together with end users, industrial and societal stakeholders, in preparation for the scaling up of our technology developments to transform society for the better. To reach these objectives, our consortium of nine partners encompasses competencies in material sciences, photonics, plasmonics, PICs technology and social science, and includes two SMEs.

The WIPE project aims at developing hybrid electronic-photonic chips as a key enabling technology for data transmission purposes. It aims at bringing photonics to a new level by developing a concept that can be well industrialised. This sustains EU leadership in photonics, as is the ambition of the work program. A new wafer-scale technology will thus be developed for direct and intimate attachment of III-V Indium-Phosphide (InP) photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and BiCMOS electronic chips (ICs). The ICs contain the driver, receiver andcontrol electronics for the PIC and enable direct connection to polymer optical waveguides. This technology of ‘wafer scale heterogeneous integration’ enables high-performance and high-density photonic-electronic (photronic) modules are created having a lower energy consumption, lower packaging complexity and lower cost compared to modules using more traditional interconnection techniques like wire bonding and laser welding of fibre connections. Next to the new bonding technology, an integrated module design technology is developed for efficient co-design of hybrid photonic and electronic modules. A library consisting of photonic/electronic standard modules, is created leveraging the process design kits (PDKs) of the most important European foundries of photonic chips in combination with a powerful BiCMOS. These tools are of significantimportance to industry, since they offer photronic module designers a standardised approach that highly facilitates the module design for SMEs and affordable manufacturing by photonic and electronic foundries. The WIPE approach will be proven by showing the feasibility of a 400Gb/s transceiver for data centre application.