The silicon nitride platform is passive in nature. The hybrid solutions for emission, modulation, nonlinear processing and detection of light on this platform are still non-optimum or even totally absent if these solutions should offer at the same time, high photonic performance, wideband operation, and integration robustness. LOLIPOP is a photonic integration project that aims to fill this gap and enable the silicon nitride platform to make the next step. To this end, LOLIPOP invests on the combination of the silicon nitride with the lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) technology, while working in parallel on the integration of semiconducting materials on the silicon nitride platform using state-of-the-art methods. The silicon nitride platform, so called TriPleX and developed by Lionix, serves in LOLIPOP as the motherboard of this new hybrid technology.
Empowered by its ambitious vision, LOLIPOP introduces a number of key innovations, summarized through the following 9 objectives:
Obj 1: Establish a process for the integration of LNOI films on the TriPleX platform, and develop hybrid TriPleX PICs that can support high-speed modulation and second-order nonlinear functions on-chip
Obj 2: Develop a process for heterogeneous integration of semiconducting layers on TriPleX wafers and growth of Ge photodiodes with wideband operation (400-1600 nm) and high bandwidth (up to 30 GHz)
Obj 3: Design active elements and develop external cavity lasers on the hybrid TriPleX platform with ultra-narrow linewidth, wide tunability and operation in the wavelength bands from 780 to 1100 nm
Obj 4: Develop CMOS electronics with low power consumption and high bandwidth (up to 30 GHz)
Obj 5: Demonstrate the use of LOLIPOP technology for Laser Doppler Vibrometers at 532 nm with ultra-high detection bandwidth (6 GHz)
Obj 6: Demonstrate the use of LOLIPOP technology for FMCW LIDAR modules at 905 nm with ultra-high chirp (10 GHz) and beam scanning mechanism on-chip
Obj 7: Demonstrate the use of LOLIPOP technology for photonic integrated convolutional neural networks with ultra-high computation speed (24 TOPS)
Obj 8: Demonstrate the use of LOLIPOP technology for integrated optical squeezed state sources
Obj 9: Work on a roadmap for the consolidation of LOLIPOP integration technology and the establishment of a low-volume production line that will offer this technology as a commercial service.
