CSEM spins off lithium niobate photonic integrated circuit foundry

The Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM) research facility in Neuch âtel, Switzerland, has spun off a new company dedicated to manufacturing photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) material.

Incorporated last month and known as "CCRAFT", the new firm is claimed to be the first production-ready pure-play foundry in the world to offer TFLN chips, which will be fabricated on a 150 mm-diameter wafer production line.

"CCRAFT already delivers pilot production today and plans to expand its production lines in Neuch âtel to deliver millions of advanced photonic chips," announced CSEM, with anticipated applications as key components in optical communications, artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, and quantum technologies.

The development follows last year's emergence of Zurich-based Lightium, a separate Swiss company also working on TFLN technology (** see clarification at foot of article **). Last September it raised $7 million in seed funding, and is collaborating with the Netherlands-based photonics assembly and packaging specialist PHIX.

Ready to scale up
Hamed Sattari, a CSEM technology manager who is the founder and CEO of CCRAFT, said in a CSEM release:

"Mainstream photonic platforms are hitting fundamental limits in bandwidth and energy efficiency, bottlenecks amplified by the AI-driven demand for data. TFLN is a very promising material platform capable of meeting these next-generation performance needs.

"We have developed our technology over the last six years at CSEM, and manufactured thousands of photonics chips for more than 40 partners. We are now ready to scale up production."

In a LinkedIn post, Sattari added: "Our chips enable data transmission beyond 1.6 Tbit/s with up to ten times lower energy consumption - a leap forward for AI data centers and telecom infrastructure.

"But the impact goes even further: our TFLN photonic chips open the door to entirely new possibilities in quantum technologies, advanced sensing, and beyond."

The CEO points out that TFLN combines several key advantages, such as a high electro-optic efficiency, low optical losses, a wide transparency window, optical nonlinearities, and compatibility with microelectronic systems.

"This positions TFLN as a transformative platform not only for data communication, but also for quantum technologies, lidar, advanced sensing, and space applications," Sattari said.

"CCRAFT offers both monolithic chips, built entirely on a TFLN substrate, and hybrid designs that combine TFLN with silicon for easier integration."

While many companies are pushing the limits of existing photonics material platforms, based on either silicon photonics or indium phosphide (InP), TFLN proponents suggest that these will not be able to deliver the leap in performance demanded by the market.

CSEM points to the promise of up to eight times faster speed and a ten-fold reduction in energy consumption as the key advantages offered by the novel thin-film take on what is already a well understood and widely deployed optical material in its bulk format.

"Thanks to its excellent electro-optic properties and compatibility with modern chip manufacturing, TFLN enables ultra-fast and efficient data transfer and industrial adaptation," states the research facility.

"Beyond data communication, TFLN also opens new possibilities for applications in quantum technologies, advanced sensing, and space systems - thanks to its low optical losses, wide transparency range, and ability to work at standard electronics voltages."

MPW offering
While it will face competition from both incumbent technologies and rival TFLN purveyors including Lightium and Massachusetts-based HyperLight, CCRAFT says that it will also provide a dedicated process design kit (PDK) to support customers, alongside multi-project wafers to lower the cost of the foundry process.

"The PDK contains a complete modeling of each component's physical characteristics and performance to ensure that the manufactured chips behave as designed," reported CSEM, adding that CCRAFT would be able to produce MPWs containing up to 800 different chips per wafer.

"We are the first company in the world to be production-ready for TFLN-based chips," claims Sattari. "Other businesses are still raising funds or offering so-called virtual foundry services, with the need to outsource the actual production.

"Our tight collaboration with CSEM allows us to move from pilot manufacturing to industrial production."

CCRAFT plans to install additional production lines in Neuch âtel to deliver 12 million chips per year by 2030, and capture up to 30 per cent of the worldwide market in the process.

Bahaa Roustom, CSEM's VP of marketing and business development, noted: "By leveraging CSEM's infrastructure and years of know-how and also Horizon Europe projects, CCRAFT can accelerate the time to production and could become the first company in the world offering industrial production of components essential to high-performance optical information processing.

"This is a real opportunity for Switzerland and Europe to regain some sovereignty in an essential communication and computing technology."

** Update and clarification (May 14th) **: The original version of this article stated that Lightium was a spin-off from CSEM. This is incorrect - Lightium's two co-founders set up the company having previously worked at CSEM, but it is not an official spin-off.