Device consortium wins Eurostars program funding for €1.2m MISCA project

A UK-Netherlands consortium has been awarded a two-year, €1.2m project by Eurostars - a joint program between EUREKA and the European Community - to develop next-generation photodetector solutions for ultra-high-speed datacoms applications.

The Compound Semiconductor Centre Ltd (CSC) - a joint venture founded in 2015 between Cardiff University and epiwafer foundry and substrate maker IQE plc of Cardiff, Wales, UK - will deliver project MISCA (Monolithically Integrated Detector Solutions for Next Generation Communications Applications) in collaboration with University of Manchester spin-off Integrated Compound Semiconductors (ICS) Ltd (which designs and manufactures RF, sensing and optical devices) and VTEC Lasers and Sensors of Eindhoven, The Netherlands, which was founded in 2011 and designs and produces devices for the communications, sensing and Internet of Things (IoT) markets.

“The project aims to drive a radical improvement in component performance via advances in semiconductor materials integration and will result in a new European source of high-performance detector products for fiber-optic data-communications applications,” says project lead and CSC director Dr Wyn Meredith.

“The rapid growth of the high-speed optical transceiver market is an exciting opportunity for ICS as the demands of the 100G/200G/400G optical transmission markets require a deep understanding of RF component design to complement high-quality optoelectronic device manufacture,” comments professor Mohamed Missous, founder & CEO of ICS (which supplies fabricated wafers, die and fully packaged components for the communications, defence and automotive industries).

“The Eurostars program is specifically aimed at enabling agile SMEs to collaborate across Europe, and gives VTEC a great opportunity to collaborate with like-minded companies in the UK to extend our value chain,” notes VTEC CEO Dr Jan Mink. “We see great potential in using semiconductor component integration to enable a new class of low-power-consumption, high-performance detector products.”

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Tags: Photonics

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