PARADIGM

PARADIGM created a paradigm shift in the development and manufacturing of photonics integrated components based on Indium Phosphide (InP). This shift resulted in cost effective and versatile design, manufacturing and packaging based on generic foundry processes. This project, with a strong cross European consortium consisting of leading industrial and academic players, paved the way for the world’s first generic photonic foundry businesses and enabled photonic ICs to become used in a far broader range of application fields.

PARADIGM set the foundations for a powerful, cost effective and versatile foundry platform in Europe. This lead to a dramatic reduction of fabrication, packaging and testing costs as well as the development time of Application Specific Photonic ICs and thereby paved the way for the breakthrough of the large-scale application of photonics.

Covering the complete product creation process from idea to product, from research to manufacturing, PARADIGM enabled the following objectives which remain at the heart of the JePPIX ambition:

• Technology convergence and roadmapping. Three highly capable industrial technology platforms were created.
• Create methods and tools. New working methods and tools to decouple the design work from the fabrication technology and to bring the design of photonic integrated components to a higher level of abstraction.
• Set up generic packaging and testing. Allowing a variety of different components and systems, a generic packaging approach for both low and high port count components. Standardized in-line and off-line test methods to characterize and prove the performance of the products.

• Exploit and disseminate the project results. Enabling awareness of the potential of ASPICs for businesses and therefore enlarge the potential application areas of photonics. In addition the project started multi-project fabrication runs.