Equipment4photonics

Integrated Photonics is rapidly gaining interest from the market. However, as an emerging technology, the production facilities are not yet geared up to efficient and cost-effective medium size to high volume production.

Much of the production equipment is “borrowed” from the Semicon business which does the job but does not respond fully to the specific requirements related to the production of integrated photonics. E.g., assembly accuracies are an order of magnitude smaller than needed for Semicon, and also existing test equipment and procedures cannot be used directly.

Photon Delta, the High Tech Systems Centre of the TU/Eindhoven (HTSC) and High Tech NL/Holland Semiconductors have joined forces to organize a program (equipment4photonics) that will address the specific needs of the production of integrated photonics and that will result in a range of development projects with the Dutch industry. This initiative will enable the Dutch integrated photonic industry to enter into medium and high volume efficient and cost-effective production. For the Dutch industry, it will give opportunities to enter into this new market of production equipment both on a national scale as on a global scale.

On Thursday, October 15, an introductory webinar was given by the three organizers to introduce the needs for production equipment of the integrated photonics industry too, in particular, the equipment building society. These needs were collected by HTSC and HTNL via in-depth interviews with representatives of the various integrated photonics players in the Netherlands. The webinar was attended by some 60 attendees and developed as a lively discussion as the attendees could ask questions via a chat function.
Download the rapport ‘Equipment needs for efficient and reliable production of integrated photonics’

Workshops

As a follow on, four workshops are planned to enter into more detail on the various equipment challenges.
The four workshops are:

• front-end;
• back-end;
• metrology;
• industry 4.0.

The aim of these workshops is to initiate the formation of groups of stakeholders from the demanding and from the offering side that can, as a project team, execute one or more developments of equipment solutions for the integrated photonics industry.

As we progress, we will give regular updates on events and possibilities that arise from this program for the industry.

For more information on this program please contact: ben.van.der.zon@Hightechnl.nl