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The European Commission's Chips Programme has just selected the PIXEurope initiative, in which the UPVfab laboratory and the iTEAM Institute of the Universitat Politècnica de València under the coordination of Pascual Muñoz and José Capmany participate, to lead the European Pilot Line for Photonic Chips.

PIXEurope will mobilise investments of around 400 million to offer unique technological capabilities to the industry, boost its capacity in photonic chips and position Europe as a global leader.

The PIXEurope initiative and action plan is co-funded by the European Commission and the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Administration, the State Secretariat for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure (SETELECO) and the Strategic Project for Microelectronics and Semiconductors, known as PERTE Chip.

Coordinated by the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), PIXEurope also involves the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona, the National Microelectronics Centre of the CSIC (IMB-CNM-CSIC), the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M), and the University of Vigo.

Factory at the UPV

iTEAM and UPVfab will open a PIXEurope site at the UPV to manufacture hybrid chips, which are the next step in the technological evolution of the sector. Their work will allow companies to develop technologies in this new factory and then transfer these processes to production environments.

As Pascual Muñoz explains, hybrid photonic chips combine the best of several existing technologies into one, opening up unprecedented possibilities for different applications: high-speed communications, autonomous driving, or the development of new equipment applied to the biomedicine of the future. ‘The UPV aspires to become a world leader in hybrid photonic chips,’ says Pascual Muñoz.

In the words of José Capmany, ‘PIXEurope represents a unique opportunity to take one step further the world leadership that UPV has consolidated in Integrated Photonics through the 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.

Now,' adds Pascual Muñoz, 'it is now a matter of articulating an environment that makes it possible to advance in pre-industrial development and achieve its future consolidation in an entire ecosystem, with the capacity to create highly qualified employment, to serve various market sectors where the demand for photonic chips will grow considerably, and to attract new players in the manufacturing and encapsulation ecosystem.

UPV, leader of the PIXSpain Competence Centre

The UPV will also lead the PIXSpain Competence Centre, the Spanish consortium for integrated photonics. In addition to the Spanish participants in PIXEurope, it also includes the University of Malaga.

‘Our efforts are focused on the great challenge of hybrid photonic chips, to which we will try to respond from both PIXEurope and PIXSpain CC. In this regard, the work we are carrying out with the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona, the National Microelectronics Centre 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.

Luis Zurano Conches / UPV Communication Area (ACOM)