News: Optoelectronics
10 July 2024
PhotonDelta opens office in Silicon Valley
Photonic chips industry accelerator PhotonDelta of Eindhoven, The Netherlands (which connects and collaborates with an ecosystem of photonic chip technology organizations worldwide), has opened a new office in North America, with the aim of growing the photonic chip industry by promoting collaboration between European and North American organizations.
Based in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, the new hub will bring the Netherland’s world class photonic chip capabilities to North American organizations, says PhotonDelta. PhotoDelta’s ecosystem currently covers over 70 different organizations that form a complete value chain, including design services, multiple foundries for photonic chip fabrication, packaging, assembly and testing, and an increasing number of fabless companies that use PIC technology for innovative solutions.
Jorn Smeets, Managing Director North America at PhotonDelta, said: “We want to tap into the North American market and partner with industry leaders to help accelerate this key enabling technology. As we stimulate the internationalization of our value chain, we need to leverage on each other’s strengths and bring our know-how, operations and funding to North America.”
Besides the use of PIC technology in datacenters, PhotonDelta says that integrated photonics holds enormous opportunities for quantum computing and sensing solutions for new applications in healthcare, agriculture and automotive. To drive this innovation, PhotonDelta secured $1.2 billion to run numerous R&D programmes, lead international road mapping activities and invest in pioneering startups that apply PIC technology. Over the last five years, PhotonDelta has raised over $500 million for companies such as Smart Photonics, EFFECT Photonics, PHIX Photonics Assembly, Astrapé Networks, MantiSpectra, Surfix Diagnostics, Delta Life Science, Scantinel Photonics, Amazec, and many more.
PhotonDelta believes a unified photonic chip industry is essential, because Europe and America have key strengths in complementary integrated photonic chip technologies. Europe has a large concentration of organizations involved in the development of indium phosphide and silicon nitride based photonic chips. In the USA, the development of silicon photonics benefits from extensive infrastructure and greater scale of production due to the compatibility with traditional semiconductor manufacturing. PhotonDelta adds that silicon photonics needs indium phosphide to function, as it’s not possible to integrate active components on silicon. Silicon nitride, in turn, is useful for sensing applications and quantum computers, as it benefits from extreme low-loss characteristics.
