25 June 2018

EU-funded MOICANA project targets heterogeneous integration of InP quantum dot lasers on SiN silicon photonics platform

© Semiconductor Today Magazine / Juno PublishiPicture: Disco’s DAL7440 KABRA laser saw.

MOICANA (‘Monolithic co-integration of QD-based InP on SiN as a versatile platform for the demonstration of high performance and low-cost PIC transmitters’) is a new R&D project that targets the development of fundamental innovations in the field of photonic integrated transmitters, aiming to make them cheaper and more power efficient. Running from January 2018 to December 2020, MOICANA is funded by the European Union (EU) under its Horizon 2020 program H2020 ICT 2016-2017 – Photonics KET (Key Enabling Technology) Call (project number 780537) and the initiative of the Photonics Public Private Partnership.

The project consortium brings together four leading industrial partners and four academic and research institutes in the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) and photonic systems value chain: Greece’s Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (project coordinator), Germany’s University of Kassel, Technion - Technical University of Israel, France’s III-V Lab, Israel’s Mellanox Technologies, Switzerland’s Ligentec, Germany’s ADVA and Spain’s VLC Photonics.

The widespread adoption of optical transceivers in a broad range of application domains urgently demands low-cost, high-power-efficient and large-volume manufacturing integration technology that can meet the different specifications required in every application sector and urgently scale up to serve the growing telecom and datacom markets. The existing solutions for tackling this demand favor silicon photonics-based technologies that still feature a major drawback. They need complex and expensive hybrid integration substrates, since they rely on externally coupled indium phosphide (InP) laser sources for the final assembly, while the redundant testing for the pre- and post-processed coupled laser induces an additional cost-increasing factor.

MOICANA aims to demonstrate breakthrough performance by combining the best in class from the two worlds of photonic integration: quantum dot InP structures as the III-V light source material and silicon nitride (SiN) from silicon photonics for the passive platform.

The project targets the highest possible cost effectiveness in the mass fabrication of optical transmitters by developing technology for the epitaxial deposition of quantum dot InP components directly on silicon by selective-area growth.

MOICANA aims to highlight its versatile and scalable perspective and its credentials for broad market uptake by demonstrating a whole new series of cooler-less, energy-efficient and high-performance single-channel and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) transmitter modules for data-center interconnects (DCI) in 5G mobile front-haul and coherent communication applications.

Tags: InP QD Laser silicon photonics PIC

Visit: www.moicana.eu