10 European silicon photonics research teams to co-ordinate technology transfer, training and education

GRENOBLE, FRANCE: 10 European R&D project consortia focusing on silicon photonics will coordinate their efforts to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and technology and strengthen the European electronics industry’s ability to compete globally.

Under the umbrella of the European Silicon Photonics Cluster, the 10 main projects will coordinate efforts to:

* Raise awareness of the potential of silicon photonics among chip foundries, end-users, start-ups and other companies.
* Broadly disseminate the results of their projects.
* Train young scientists, engineers and researchers in this emerging field.
* Silicon photonics, which uses CMOS techniques to integrate optics technology onto chips, can substantially lower the cost, size and power consumption compared to existing photonics technologies, while improving device performance.

CMOS photonics may lead to low-cost solutions for a number of applications, including optical communications, optical interconnects between semiconductor chips and circuit boards, optical signal processing, optical sensing, and biological applications. It is considered to be the only viable technology to meet the cost and volume demand of such markets.

In addition to submitting articles to industry publications, cluster members will organize a silicon photonics workshop for the industry in 2011 and cooperate on training programs.

The European Silicon Photonics Cluster represents more than 30M€ (36M$) in investment by the EU and European countries. In establishing the cluster, the members agree that it is of strategic importance to maintain photonic chip-design and chip-integration functions in Europe to improve Europe’s ability to compete globally. Silicon photonics also provides new opportunities and opens new markets for European microelectronics companies.

The research projects and their focuses are:

Boom, terabit-on-chip: micro- and nano-scale silicon photonic integrated components and sub-systems enabling Tb/s capacity, scalable and fully integrated photonic routers.

Historic, heterogeneous InP on silicon technology for optical routing and logic.

Helios, photonics electronics functional integration on CMOS.

Intopsens, a highly integrated optical sensor for point-of-care, label-free identification of pathogenic bacteria strains and their antibiotic resistance.

PhotonFAB: lowering the barriers for access to silicon photonics IC technology by enhancing the silicon photonics platform ePIXfab.

Platon, Tb/s optical-routing fabrics for optical interconnects adopting plasmonics.

SOFI, New low cost active optical waveguides and ultra low power integrated optoelectronics circuits based on novel silicon-organic hybrid technology.

UK Silicon Photonics.

Wadimos, wavelength division multi-plexed photonic layer on CMOS.

Sabio. This completed project focused on ultrahigh sensitivity slot-waveguide biosensor on a highly integrated chip for simultaneous diagnosis of multiple diseases.