OBJECTIVES

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WHAT ELENA AIMS TO ACHIEVE

  • ELENA will pave the way for a European photonic integrated circuit (PIC) foundry service for lithium niobate (LNOI).
  • ELENA’s LNOI PIC production facility shall be open to all interested stakeholders in the photonics industry and R&D at an affordable price.
  • This will make the capabilities of efficient electro-optic (EO) and nonlinear PICs accessible to drive innovation in the European optics industry.
  • Annual growth rates of over 25% are forecast for the PIC market in the coming years.

ELENA’S TOP-LEVEL GOALS

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CREATE A PDK LIBRARY OF STANDARD BUILDING BLOCKS

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ELENA’s primary goal is to create a set of standard building blocks (BBs) for the LNOI PIC platform with high reliability and yield that can be monolithically integrated and combined in a large variety of PIC designs and applications.
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These building blocks will be available to all interested entities as a Process Design Kit (PDK) library, the industry-standard method for accessing PIC foundries.
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SET UP A EUROPEAN SUPPLY CHAIN FOR THE LNOI PIC FOUNDRY

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The creation of a European supply chain for ELENA’s LNOI PIC foundry covering the entire design and manufacturing process as well as packaging is ELENA’s second main goal. This will be essential for the successful growth of a European LNOI-based PIC industry.

These top-level goals translate into five main objectives:

OBJECTIVE 1: Develop the key LNOI PIC building blocks

This is ELENA’s starting point:

  • Develop and mature the design and performance of the main building blocks for the LNOI PIC platform with the target specifications as listed in the table.
  • Develop a reliable and reproducible fabrication process of LNOI building blocks to achieve the targeted performance (see table) with a yield above 60%.
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ELENA’s main building blocks are the following: Fast phase shifter, Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulator, periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) waveguides, tunable cavities, variable optical couplers.

OBJECTIVE 2: Develop a commercialization strategy

The implementation of the key aspects of the supply chain for a sustainable European LNOI-based PIC industry includes:
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Establishing the processes to produce 150 mm diameter optical-grade LNOI wafers on an industrial scale
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Developing a reliable and flexible method for packaging the LNOI chips and interfacing them with other PIC platforms (such as indium phosphate (InP)) for low-cost hybrid integration;
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Creating a PDK library of building blocks (BBs) for the LNOI PIC platform.
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OBJECTIVE 3: Produce four PIC prototypes

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The suitability of the new LNOI chips will be put to the test:

ELENA intends to produce four PIC prototypes for the end-user partners in the project consortium to demonstrate the monolithic integration of the newly developed building blocks in different fields of application.

OBJECTIVE 4: Create an end-user group

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Convinced supporters are the best publicity:

Create an end-user group, an advisory board and a strong network of stakeholders for LNOI-based photonics already at the early stages of the project.

OBJECTIVE 5 : Implement intellectual property (IP) protection

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And eventually, ELENA will:

Implement intellectual property (IP) protection and communicate / disseminate the outcomes of the ELENA project to potential commercial and academic users.