November 1, 2018
Fraunhofer HHI, one of the world leading InP manufacturers for photonic ICs, creates the research group “Photonic InP Foundry” (FOU) for its open access foundry activity. The institute’s commitment to the open access foundry approach ensures its further development.
As of November 2018, a new group is created within the Photonic Components department at Fraunhofer HHI, dedicated solely to the open access PIC foundry. The new group is tasked with the constant improvement of the foundry across the board: increasing performance, decreasing lead time as well as the addition of new functionalities. Head of the group is Dr.-Ing. Moritz Baier, the former project manager of the foundry activity. The team is also looking for new talents.
Since 2016, Fraunhofer HHI offers foundry services for InP-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in an open access method. The researchers started offering two multi-project wafer (MPW) runs every year and recently switched to four runs per year. The technology enables rapid prototyping of monolithic PICs for a wide range of applications and comes with a rich set of building blocks, including:
- Lasers and gain elements
- Bragg reflectors
- EA modulators (20 GHz)
- Polarization rotators and splitters
- Photodetectors (45 GHz)
- Fiber couplers, passive waveguides, MMIs, etc.