236 million for promising technology integrated photonics

December 13, 2018 – On Thursday, December 13, CITC signed the Photonics covenant representing a total investment of 236 million euros. The investment has been confirmed by the government, a number of provinces and regions, companies and knowledge institutes. Under the common flag of of PhotonDelta, their goal is to accelerate development of integrated photonics. By signing this covenant, an amount of  1.25 – 2 million euros becomes available for the CITC photonics cluster.

The knowledge and experience that are available in the Dutch semiconductor industryare joined in the CITC initiative. They will be utilized at their best through this collaboration. Together, we can accelerate the growth of the Dutch integrated photonics market and give the Netherlands a global leading position.

Major challenges in packaging of photonics chips

The combination of new photonics chips with existing electronics chips creates major challenges in the integration and packaging of chips. By integrating these technologies on one chip, the necessary bridge can be created between light and electricity on one chip. In CITC, knowledge and experience in the field of chip integration and chip packaging in the Dutch semiconductor industry, gained over the last 50 years, come together.  They will be used to help solve these challenges even faster.

National network from three regions

Thanks to the collaboration between the two Photonics Integration Technology Centers (PITCs) in Eindhoven and Twente and the CITC in Nijmegen, companies and knowledge institutes in these three regions form an open network in which new chips for ever-changing applications can be developed quickly.