XIVER calls for manufacturable photonics
XIVER says integrated photonic products must be designed for yield, reliability and scalable production from the earliest development stages.
Integrated photonics companies must consider manufacturability at the earliest stages of product development if they are to move successfully from laboratory prototypes to volume production, according to speciality foundry XIVER.
Sreekanth Chirayath, Vice President of Business Development at XIVER, said many promising photonic technologies fail to reach the market because they are designed primarily for technical performance rather than scalable manufacturing.
“A device may work perfectly on a handful of prototypes, but when you try to manufacture hundreds or thousands of wafers, yield issues emerge,” Chirayath said. “Small process variations can significantly impact performance, creating unacceptable costs or reliability risks.”
XIVER operates a qualified 200 mm wafer fabrication facility at High Tech Campus Eindhoven and supports customers working in integrated photonics, semiconductor equipment, infrared sensing and microsystems.
The company promotes a concurrent engineering approach in which design, process development and manufacturing planning take place in parallel.
This allows engineers to address process compatibility, yield, reliability, testability and cost before key design decisions are fixed.
Chirayath said integrated photonic devices are particularly sensitive to process variation, with small manufacturing differences capable of significantly affecting optical performance.
Packaging and system integration can also create challenges, including optical coupling, alignment tolerances, thermal management and testing.
“A design that achieves record performance in a demonstration environment may not be the design that can be manufactured economically in larger volumes,” he said.
XIVER is also supporting the Global Photonics Engineering Contest 2026, which gives researchers, startups and engineers access to industrial expertise and potential investment.
