Tyndall Institute to lead PIXAPP $16M investment in silicon PIC packaging

March 28, 2017

The EU is investing more than $16 million in a new international PIC packaging consortium called PIXAPP.

Professor Peter O’Brien is PIXAPP pilot line director and head of photonics packaging research at Tyndall National Institute.

To provide Europe with a state-of-the-art infrastructure supporting the industrial development and manufacture of photonic integrated circuits (PICs), the European Union (EU) is investing more than $16 million dollars (15.5 million euro) in a new international consortium called PIXAPP (www.pixapp.eu), which will be led by Ireland's Tyndall National Institute (Cork City, Ireland).

The value of the photonics market is expected to be worth more than 615 billion euro by 2020. With Europe's share of the production technology market currently at 55%, the EU, in partnership with Photonics21, has identified photonics as a Key Enabling Technology (KET) critical for the future economic development of Europe.

Speaking from the Photonics21 Annual General Meeting in Brussels, PIXAPP pilot line director and head of photonics packaging research at Tyndall National Institute, professor Peter O'Brien, said, "The consortium involved in PIXAPP, led by Tyndall, has an unmatched record of excellence in delivering many world 'firsts' in PICs. We will establish 'best in class' PIC packaging technologies that are cost-effective and scalable to high volume manufacture. We will offer these technologies through a single easy access point, which we call the Pilot Line Gateway, which is located at Tyndall. Furthermore we plan to train and educate the photonics workforce of the future by creating a unique laboratory based training programme. This programme is a game-changer not only for the European photonics industry but also global photonics."

Packaging PICs can represent up to 80% of the cost of photonics components so it is a critical area for the industry. PIXAPP is the world’s first open access PIC assembly and packaging pilot line, combining a highly-interdisciplinary team of Europe's leading industrial and research organizations. Partners in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Italy and Czech Republic each bring their own particular expertise to provide SMEs with a unique infrastructure to help them exploit the breakthrough advantages of PIC technologies.

"In the past, it has been very expensive to manufacture high volumes of PICs, and more expensive and challenging again to package them. This is creating a bottleneck for production, which is impacting the potential for growth in the photonics industry. I am confident that Tyndall National Institute's leadership will deliver market success for Europe and drive our competitiveness across the communications, medical, automotive, energy, safety and defence sectors globally," said Jose Pozo, director of the European Photonics Industry Consortium.

SOURCE: Tyndall National Institute; https://www.tyndall.ie/news/tyndall-to-lead-world-s-first-photonics-packaging-pilot-line/

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.