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Facilitating photonics innovation, through a modular, integration technology platform

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.

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Coordinator

SMART PHOTONICS BV
Net EU contribution
€ 3 224 261,25
Address
HIGH TECH CAMPUS 37 FLOOR 2
5656 AE EINDHOVEN
Netherlands

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Zuid-Nederland Noord-Brabant Zuidoost-Noord-Brabant
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost
€ 4 606 087,50
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