Project description
New technology to spur production of integrated chips
Advanced technologies will make sure the Telecom sector continues to grow. The role of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and indium phosphide (InP) will be instrumental to drive expansion but it is made only by a few enterprises. Due to this, the vast sector of data and sensor technology is deprived of the superior functionality these offer. Smart Photonics has developed a sequence of leading functional photonic modules that can be used as 'building blocks' to allow the creation of PICs. The EU-funded SmartPhotonics project will facilitate the industrialisation of software to allow customers to design chips with custom functionalities and numerous applications.
Objective
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.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternetinternet of things
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrypost-transition metals
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssemiconductivity
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback. You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
See other projects for this callSub call
H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-2
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
5656 AE EINDHOVEN
Netherlands
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.