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25 Jun 2025
CSEM spin-off CCRAFT reveals collaboration with substrate maker Soitec.
CCRAFT, the thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) photonic chip foundry recently spun out of Switzerland’s Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM), says that major semiconductor wafer provider Soitec is set to provide it with lithium niobate substrates made in Europe.
Presenting details of CCRAFT’s current and future plans at the LASER World of Photonics event in Munich, Germany - including two multi-project wafer (MPW) runs later this year - CCRAFT’s CEO and founder Hamed Sattari said that lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) wafers were now available for the first time from a European source.
Initially that will be in the form of 6-inch (150 mm) diameter material from Soitec, although Sattari also showed the Integrated Photonics technology forum in Hall A2 the latest development - a processed 8-inch (200 mm) wafer hinting at more productive TFLN chip manufacturing in the future.
“This is not [an] R&D [project] any more,” he said, pointing to the six years of developmental work at CSEM that preceded the establishment of CCRAFT in April this year. “The world needs a TFLN foundry, and we are ready.”
ELENA project
The emergence of a European supply chain to produce TFLN-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) owes much to progress made by the €5 million “ELENA” project, which was funded under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 innovation support scheme and comes to a conclusion this month.
Just a couple of days before the start of the Munich trade show, the ELENA team announced its development of the first-ever European-made LNOI substrates, describing it as a breakthrough set to establish a fully European supply chain for TFLN technology.
While AI data center deployments are the most likely initial destination for commercial TFLN PICs, the very broad transparency window offered by the material suggests potential applications in sensing and quantum applications too.
“Until now, the LNOI ecosystem has been constrained by a limited supply chain reliant on a single commercial supplier outside the EU - and the absence of a commercial foundry capable of producing TFLN photonic chips at scale,” stated the ELENA consortium.
Sattari says that the CCRAFT foundry is “uniquely positioned” at the core of the TFLN value chain, because it is able to deliver a production-grade service that has not been available until now.
“CCRAFT’s roadmap includes expanding capacity to deliver millions of TFLN chips annually, firmly positioning Europe as a global leader in photonic-chip manufacturing,” he added, although it will likely be 2028 before those kinds of volumes are reached.
MPW offering
The next few months will see two MPW offerings from the startup, with applications now being accepted. The first wafer run, which has a September deadline, will feature CCRAFT’s “CLN600-Core” process, with the “CLN600-Plus” to follow in December.
Both are based around the firm’s C-band offering, with an O-band (for datacoms) design also in the pipeline, and longer-term plans to develop visible/quantum (“VQ-band”) PICs.
Prior to Sattari’s presentation, World of Photonics delegates heard from Lightium co-founder Amir Ghadimi. Based in Zurich and also established by CSEM technologists - though not an official CSEM spin-off - Lightium is also looking to push TFLN photonics with design, foundry, and packaging services.
Others pursuing the novel approach include the Harvard University spin-out Hyperlight, which raised $37 million in a series B round of equity funding last year, and Arizona-based Quantum Computing Inc. (QCi), which launched its foundry service last month.
Touting key advantages of the material such as its high optical nonlinearity, Ghadimi also cited some of the major challenges faced by the nascent TFLN industry - with the volume supply of wafers at the top of his list.
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