WP1 Project Management: The Sustainable Exploitation Advisory Board - comprising the CEOs and directors of PhotonDelta, Smart Photonics, Fraunhofer HHI, and III-V Labs - reviewed the performance metrics and business plan to ensure the project is delivering a sustainable model for foundry services with a European industrial supply chain, guaranteeing manufacturing for customers beyond the project.
WP2 Communication and dissemination: Promotion of pilot line services has been streamlined, withwell-defined interviews, videos and events, leading to a number of promising leads.
WP3 Operations management: The operational flows have been implemented and validated within the InPulse project and are now in use beyond the original consortium.
WP4 Design acceleration: PDK version control methods and procedures have been implemented and are being validated across the supply chain. This ensures traceability from design through to production and test. Data interchange formats for test and design are in place and standardized data formats are being shared through appropriate forums to enable industry-wide alignment and wider interoperability.
WP5 Measurement automation: Measurement interfaces have been defined and an instance of the interface has been implemented on a reference tool developed for automated die measurement. Reference designs and common testing environments have been defined to link the JePPIX pilot line with the PIXAPP pilot line for PIC packaging. Upgrades to accommodate enhanced throughput (time in test) and performance (RF measurements). Automatic part handling has been implemented for full-coverage, statistically-representative test and measurement.
WP6 PIC wafer production: For each of the pilot line platforms, technology adaptations have been implemented to facilitate systematic improvements in the foundry process capabilities. Systematic data collection and analysis procedures have been extended to support statistical process control (SPC) for process optimization. Optimizations are monitored through process capability indices (Cpk) and improved building block parameter tolerances. The new buried heterostructure PIC platform at III-V Lab is in development and preparations are in place to create a PDK for MPW services on this new platform, whilst at HHI, the foundry capability has been enhanced with the development of improved building blocks for high speed (56 Gbaud) modulators and polarization handling elements. Methods to reduce time in production have been implemented and proven. Wafer size has been scaled to 4” diameter.
WP7 PIC Verification: Methods have been defined across the three fabs for in-line and offline verification methods. This provides a design-agnostic validation of the foundry processes based on the basic building block properties as specified in the manufacturing-grade PDKs. Richer data allows tolerance information to be presented to the developers in these advanced PDKs using commercially maintained design tools.
WP8 Validation, and show-cases: Known good die (KGD) selection criteria are being addressed as a customer-specified quality gate for production. By using real-world PIC requirements for data communications and fiber optic sensing, the foundry processes and tools are validated, and show-cases for sensing and communications have been built. A new modular sensor platform is about to be launched. Data comm solutions are under evaluation for data centre connectivity. Customer-driven quality management aspects are identified and integrated into the operational flow.
WP9 Open Calls & Demonstrators: Support methods for pioneer businesses interested in developing InP-based projects have been established, and mechanisms to engage off-radar businesses have been identified. Application notes to raise awareness of possible application areas and technology prospects among designers and interested parties have been published. The Open Call for participation in the demonstrator program was launched and twelve businesses are already benefitting from the processes for foundry based dedicated wafer production. Tens of businesses per year using the multi-project wafer services are benefitting from the upgraded technologies.
WP10 Pilot line exploitation: The JePPIX Pilot Line has adopted the open access foundry model supported by PDKs. The open access model allows businesses of any size and from any market to develop their own products and create their own supply chain to bring in the required expertise and manage business risk. The cost model outlines costs to be expected by the customer when going from proof-of-concept (TRL4) to pilot production (TRL7).
