Compared to electronics, integrated photonics is still at least two decades less mature. Electronics has many validated and qualified available building blocks (BBs). End users can use them directly from the foundries’ websites, through a licensing process for instance. These BBs have been fabricated many times and the foundries have gathered performance statistics about them. Moreover, some standards have been accepted within the user group and technology and manufacturing developments have progressed in a coherent direction.
The integrated photonics value chain is not as mature. Standardization is still a wish from all, and the functional BBs are usually custom made, according to end user needs. This means that when designing a circuit, it is hard to use many validated and qualified BBs, and hence, the foundries usually do not guarantee the performance of the BBs. Thus, end users frequently iterate the whole cycle of development (design, fabrication and characterization at least) many times in order to optimize their BBs. This is a significant cost of both time and money.
The core competency of VLC Photonics can improve this situation. With an extensive experience in designing custom BBs, we have decided to develop and use our own design software modules to produce optimized BB designs according to the material, the foundry and the process used.
Ordering and using the so-designed BBs, the customer can rely on experts’ designs, supported by all the feedback from many fabrication runs. Through licensing the use of these BBs, VLC Photonics allows the customer to save time and money through not having to iterate the design, fabrication and characterization of BBs that are already mature VLC BB designs.
