Enabling Scalable Heterogeneous Integration for Photonic Chips
As photonic integrated circuits (PICs) become more complex, combining different semiconductor materials within a single chip is increasingly essential. Microtransfer printing is emerging as one of the most promising technologies to make this possible at scale.
Within the PhotonDelta ecosystem, a consortium of expert partners are collaborating on an initiative to develop contact and non-contact microtransfer printing as a reliable manufacturing technology. The specific use case will involve integrating III-V semiconductor devices onto silicon nitride photonic platforms.
By advancing this capability, the ecosystem aims to enable a new generation of heterogeneous photonic chips. These will combine high-performance active components with low-loss photonic integrated circuits: paving the way for the scalable production of advanced photonic chip systems and real-world applications.
The Challenge
Different photonic materials offer complementary advantages. However, each material is typically manufactured using incompatible fabrication processes.
Silicon nitride (SiN) photonic chips enable ultra-low optical losses and support highly complex photonic integrated circuits. However, they lack functionality for light generation, amplification, and detection. These functions are provided by III–V semiconductor materials, such as indium phosphide (InP), which exhibit higher waveguide losses but enable efficient light emission and are essential for lasers and semiconductor optical amplifiers.
Combining both material platforms is essential. The problem lies in doing so reliably and at wafer scale. This continues to be a major manufacturing challenge.
The Opportunity
Microtransfer printing provides a scalable solution to these challenges. The technology allows small semiconductor components to be precisely transferred from one wafer to another. This enables high-performance III-V devices to be integrated with silicon nitride (SiN) photonic circuits in a scalable way.
By maturing this technology, PhotonDelta ecosystem partners will essentially unlock a powerful new integration platform for photonic chips.
They’ll also be creating a robust microtransfer printing infrastructure that will make it possible to:
- Accelerate heterogeneous integration of active photonic components
- Enable scalable III-V-on-SiN photonic chip platforms
- Remove obstacles between photonic chip design and manufacturing
- Strengthen Europe and the Netherlands’ ability to manufacture advanced photonic chip systems at scale
However, realising this opportunity requires significant coordination across device design, fabrication processes, and manufacturing infrastructure.
The Collaborative Solution
The Microtransfer Printing initiative brings together partners from across the PhotonDelta ecosystem to mature the technology and prepare it for industrial deployment.
- SMART Photonics focuses on the optimisation of III-V source wafers, ensuring the fabrication of semiconductor optical amplifiers designed for transfer printing.
- IMEC advances the integration process itself, developing wafer-scale microtransfer printing techniques able to increase alignment accuracy, throughput, and device yield.
- TU/e contributes expertise in device design and fabrication, developing the photonic chip building blocks and integration strategies required for heterogeneous platforms.
- TNO supports the development of advanced integration approaches and works on non-contact transfer technologies that extend the capabilities of microtransfer printing.
Together, these partners are developing the process technology, reliability testing, and design frameworks needed to transform microtransfer printing into a mature industrial capability.
Ecosystem Benefits
By addressing heterogeneous integration as a shared manufacturing challenge, this initiative delivers significant benefits for the entire PhotonDelta ecosystem:
- Faster technology development: enabling complex photonic chip systems to move from prototype to production more quickly.
- Higher integration density: combining active and passive photonic functions on a single chip.
- Stronger supply chains: creating the foundation for a European III-V-on-SiN manufacturing ecosystem.
- Expanded application potential: supporting technologies such as LiDAR, telecom lasers, quantum communication, and advanced sensing.
Most importantly, this work ensures that heterogeneous photonic integration can scale in tandem with the growing demands of next-generation photonic applications.
