Valencia will have a new experimental plant for the development of new hybrid photonic chipsone of the objectives that had been set within the European plan to design and produce semiconductors in Europe. The Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) will host this facility after the European Commission’s Chips Program has selected the PIXEurope initiative in which it participates.
The future facility planned for small-scale production of these new photonics technology chips will allow companies to develop technologies in this new factory, to later transfer those processes to scale production environments. The UPVfab laboratory and the iTEAM Institute of the UPV They will be in charge of creating and managing this pilot plant.
This announcement coincides with the plans of both the universities and the Valencian administrations and the existing sector in Valencia itself, which for a few years has formed the Valencia Silicon Cluster to try to raise European and Perte Chip funds. According to this entity, which brings together several multinationals and spin-offs with design and innovation teams in semiconductors and photonics, the Valencian sector accounts for more than half of the workers in this activity in Spain.
Precisely, this cluster sought to attract a European project for the creation of small scalable factories to develop new chips prior to industrial productiondue to the difficulty and heavy investment required by chip gigafactories such as those in Taiwan and China. Furthermore, it was pointed out Valencia’s experience in photonics as one of its great alternatives to develop a disruptive technology that is more economical than the current ones.
The trigger for the launch of this new plant has been the decision of the Chips Program of the European Commission, which seeks to develop the semiconductor industry, to select the PIXEurope initiative presented by several Spanish institutions to lead the European Pilot Line of Photonic Chips.
This new line of the European Chip Plan to develop this new technology will mobilize investments of around 400 million euroswith the aim of enhancing its capacity in photonic chips and positioning Europe as a global leader. PIXEurope will be co-financed by the European Commission and the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service, the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures (SETELECO) and the Strategic Project for Microelectronics and Semiconductors, known as PERTE Chip.
The new line is coordinated by the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) of Barcelona and in addition to the Polytechnic of Valencia, the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona, the National Microelectronics Center of the CSIC (IMB-CNM-CSIC), the Carlos III University also participate. of Madrid (UC3M) and the University of Vigo.
What are photonic chips
The two Valencian centers will open a PIXEurope headquarters at the UPV for the manufacturing of hybrid chips. These chips, unlike traditional electronic ones, They operate using light instead of electricity to carry out information processing tasks. A system that also allows us to reduce the necessary energy, one of the big problems in the sector given its strong growth.
According to one of the coordinators of the UPV, Pascual Muñoz, Hybrid photonic chips combine the best of several existing technologies into oneopening unprecedented possibilities for different applications: high-speed communications, autonomous driving, or the development of new equipment applied to the biomedicine of the future.
“Now it is about articulating an environment that makes it possible to advance in pre-industrial development and achieve its future consolidation in a full ecosystem, with the capacity to create highly qualified employment, serve various market sectors where the demand for photonic chips is going to grow considerablyas well as attracting new players from the manufacturing and encapsulation ecosystem,” he explains.
In fact, the Valencian university already has several leading firms in photonics and semiconductor design on its own campus, which have promoted the creation of a cluster precisely to attract this type of investment from Perte Chip. “The UPV aspires to become one of the world leaders in hybrid photonic chips,” highlights Pascual Muñoz.
In the words of another of the coordinators and one of the leading researchers in this technology, José Capmany, “PIXEurope represents a unique opportunity to take one step further the world leadership that the UPV has consolidated in Integrated Photonics through R&D carried out at the ITEAM Institute and UPVFab, as well as in technology transfer through its spinoff companies VLC Photonics, iPronics and Calsens.
National collaboration
The UPV will also lead the PIXSpain Competence Center, the Spanish integrated photonics consortium. In addition to the Spanish participants in PIXEurope, the University of Malaga is also a member.
“Our efforts are focused on this great challenge that hybrid photonic chips represent, to which we will try to respond both from PIXEurope and PIXSpain CC. In this sense, the work we carry out with the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona, National Center of Microelectronics of the CSIC, with whom we started working twelve years ago, in a collaboration that is now reinforced with this new challenge,” concludes Pascual Muñoz.
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