UPVfab to participate in European Commission photonic chips project
The Valencia-based laboratory will be the site of a pilot plant for photonic chips, mobilising close to 10 percent of the €400 million financing for the PIXEurope consortium
UPVfab, a laboratory belonging to the Polytechnic University of Valencia, has announced that it will participate in the PIXEurope consortium, which has been chosen by the European Commission's Chips Program as the European pilot line for photonic chips. The project includes the installation of a pilot plant in Valencia, which will manufacture these components that are used in a wide range of technologies, from self-driving vehicles to biomedicine.
The project is 50 percent co-financed by the European Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) and the Ministry of Digital Transition. It will require the incorporation of around 50 professionals, whom it is seeking to recruit in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and Germany.
The director of UPVfab, Pascual Muñoz, explained that PIXEurope “will involve investments in pilot manufacturing plants, including for UPVfab, which will be dedicated to hybrid photonic chips, the next technological leap in integrated photonics” and indicated that companies would be able to develop manufacturing processes at these facilities that would then be transferred to industry.
The UPV will mobilise close to 10 percent of the €400 million of PIXEurope financing to establish the pilot plant in Valencia and develop future hybrid chip technologies.
The growing demand for the needs of digital society is leading to an increase in the global market for PICs, the production of which is expected to grow by more than 400 percent over the next decade. By the end of this decade, the global photonics market is expected to exceed €1.5 trillion, a figure comparable to the entire annual GDP of Spain.
In this context, since 2019, the UPV has been developing a line of collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM), in addition to leading and coordinating PIXSpain, the initiative for development of the integrated photonics sector in Spain. It is also a coordinator of the PIXSpain Competence Center, a node of access to PIXEurope technologies in Spain as well as to training, technology transfer and access to investment opportunities.
José Capmany, a researcher at UPVfab and the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications, emphasised that this project represents “a strategic opportunity complementing R&D&I in excellence and technology transfer, and aims to increase the portfolio of resident companies at UPVfab.”
Image credit: UPVfab
