Circuit (PIX) Pilot Line For Life Science Applications (PIX4LIFE)

Research Project, 2016 – 2019

Photonics is essential in today’s life science technology. PIX4life will mature a state of the art silicon nitride (SiN) photonics pilot line for life science applications in the visible range and pave the way to make it accessible as an enabler for product development by a broad range of industrial customers. We aim at

• establishing a validated CMOS compatible SiN technology platform in the visible range for complex densely integrated photonics integrated circuits (PICs),
• developing a supply chain to integrate mature semiconductor laser sources and CMOS detector arrays with the SiN PICs on the basis of technologies that are scalable to high volume,
• establishing appropriate design kits and tools,
• demonstrating the performance of the pilot line for well-chosen life science applications in the domain of vital sensing, multispectral sources for super-resolution microscopy, cytometry and 3D tissue imaging,
• setting up the logistics for multi-project-wafer (MPW) access to the pilot line. Integrated photonics has demonstrated that optical functions can be realized in a more compact, robust and cost-effective way by integrating functionalities on a single chip. At present industrialization is limited to telecom applications at infrared wavelengths.