Loading...
News Article

Plasmonic technology opens the way to mass manufacture of high-performance chips

News

EU-funded researchers have created a ground breaking platform to meet industry’s need for low-energy, small-size, complex and high-performance circuits.

Photonics technology plays an important role in the European and global economies, driving innovation in sectors such as ICT, medicine, energy, military, manufacturing, agriculture and space. As its use spreads, it becomes increasingly important to find ways to mass produce photonics devices at low cost. This implies merging the technology with standardised production processes that are compatible with advanced electronics integrated circuit technologies. In other words, combining photonic and electronic functionalities in one chip.

The problem lies in incompatible dimensions. While electronic chip sizes are measured in nanometres, photonics chips exist in the order of micro- or millimetres. The EU-funded PLASMOfab project took up – and overcame – this challenge with the help of plasmonic technology. Ten industrial partners and academic and research institutes combined their know-how and expertise in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and optoelectronics to create a plasmo-photonic chip. Now successfully completed, the project has made the mass manufacture of these high-performance components possible.

The PLASMOfab team’s work has brought about great advances in the technology used in optical data communications and biosensing for point-of-care applications. It has developed plasmonics that are compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology already used in electronics, and has used this technology to consolidate advanced PICs with electronic ICs in mass production. Standardised CMOS processes were used to merge CMOS-compatible metals like aluminium, titanium nitride and copper, and photonic structures with electronics.

A major achievement of the project was the development of a novel ultra-compact plasmonic transmitter. The device has a footprint of 90 x 5.5 µm² and transmits 0.8 TBit/s (800 Gbit/s) through 4 individual 0.2 TBit/s transmitters. The project team also demonstrated how low propagation losses can be achieved using CMOS-compatible aluminium plasmonic waveguides co-integrated with silicon nitride photonics. Their findings were published in the journal ‘Scientific Reports’.

“PLASMOfab’s main goal has been to address the ever increasing needs for low energy, small size, high complexity and high performance mass manufactured PICs,” said Assistant Professor Nikos Pleros of project coordinator Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in a press release posted on the ‘Synopsys’ website. “We have achieved this by developing a revolutionary yet CMOS-compatible fabrication platform for seamless co-integration of active plasmonics with photonic and electronic components.”

The partners expect that by further developing this technology they will be able to demonstrate the marked advantages that CMOS-compatible plasmonics have when applied to PICs. “When the best of all three worlds of plasmonics, photonics, and electronics converge in a single integration platform, PICs with unprecedented performance and functionality will be realized, targeting a diverse set of applications and industrial needs while meeting mass production requirements,” explained lead researcher Dr Dimitris Tsiokos of Aristotle University.

PLASMOfab (A generic CMOS-compatible platform for co-integrated plasmonics/photonics/electronics PICs towards volume manufacturing of low energy, small size and high performance photonic devices) concluded in December 2018. Its research has led to the launch of two new companies whose goals will be to commercialise the new technologies.

Quintessent appoints Bob Nunn chief operating officer
PI to demonstrate new PIC alignment system at Photonics West
Drut launches 2500 product series with CPO for AI datacentres
III-V Epi advocates GaAs for new lasers
Marvell announces new CPO architecture for custom AI accelerators
Printing high-speed modulators on SOI
Photon IP raises €4.75m for advanced PICs
ANELLO Photonics launches Maritime Inertial Navigation System
Aeluma joins AIM Photonics as full industry member
Imec makes breakthrough with GaAs lasers on silicon
POET acquires Super Photonics Xiamen
Voyant Photonics launches affordable Carbon LiDAR
Penn State makes breakthrough in photonic switching
New nanocrystals could lead to more efficient optical computing
QCi awarded NASA contract to apply Dirac-3 photonic optimisation solver
The Netherlands launches ChipNL Competence Centre
TOPTICA to create chip-integrated lasers for quantum PIC project
NSF selects six pilot projects for National Quantum Virtual Laboratory
SiLC Technologies launches Eyeonic Trace Laser Line Scanner
Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub awarded $21.3 million CHIPS Act funding
Cambridge Graphene Centre and CORNERSTONE to participate in PIXEurope
Cost-effective lasers for extended SWIR applications
IBM unveils co-packaged optics technology for AI and datacentres
QCi announces $50 million concurrent stock offerings
CHIPS Act funding to be awarded to Coherent, Skywater, and X-Fab
ERC consolidator grant awarded for optoacoustic neural network project
Imec demonstrates InP chiplet integration on 300 mm RF silicon interposer
Ayar Labs raises $155 million for optical I/O
Celestial AI awarded 2024 Start-up to Watch by Global Semiconductor Alliance
Researchers develop “last missing piece” of silicon photonics
Quantum sensors for controlling prosthetics
UPVfab to participate in European Commission photonic chips project

×
Search the news archive

To close this popup you can press escape or click the close icon.
Logo
x
Logo
×
Register - Step 1

You may choose to subscribe to the PIC Magazine, the PIC Newsletter, or both. You may also request additional information if required, before submitting your application.


Please subscribe me to:

 

You chose the industry type of "Other"

Please enter the industry that you work in:
Please enter the industry that you work in: