LIGENTEC FRANCE (LGTF). LGTF is a 100% daughter company of LIGENTEC SA in Switzerland. LGTF is strategically placed at the X-FAB site in Corbeil and has a team of designers, process engineers and test engineers to introduce new photonic processes to X-FAB and to provide quality control on fabricated wafers.
LGTF is an independent pure-play foundry in association with X-FAB for industrialization. The baseline of LGTF’s Si3N4 platform has been installed in X-FAB in 2020-22 and is serving customers in their development roadmap on emerging markets such as lidar, sensing and quantum technologies. In this way, LGTF has created the biggest European based PIC fabrication line with open access to other European SMEs, startups and large corporations.
Dr. Michael Zervas has over 10 years of experience in nanofabrication including at IBM and Intel. His expertise in CMOS fabrication places him in an excellent position to lead WP2 for low-loss PIC development in 200 nm thin silicon nitride. He has led several international research projects and has a strong team both in process development as well as project management. LGTF will coordinate the project and thus lead the scientific management in WP1.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT): Christian Koos is a highly recognized researcher in the field of Optics & Photonics. He has published more than 140 journal papers, filed more than 30 patent applications. He is internationally recognized in the field of photonic integration, optical communications, as well as ultra-broadband photonic-electronic signal processing. Besides his activities as a professor at KIT, Christian is co-founder of Vanguard Photonics GmbH, Vanguard Automation GmbH, SilOriX GmbH, Deeplight SA, and Luxtelligence SA. Within MAGNIFY, KIT will contribute to packaging and assembly of multilane EDWA (WP3), lead application demonstrations in high-speed communications, and ultra-broadband photonic-electronic signal processing (WP4).
SCUOLA SUPERIORE DI STUDI UNIVERSITARI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO S. ANNA (SSSA)
Within SSSA, the activities associated with MAGNIFY will be carried out at Institute of Information, Communication, and Perception Technologies (TeCIP), under the leadership of Prof. Antonella Bogoni. Her research activity is largely oriented towards photonics technologies for optical communication and sensing, with a special focus on radars for security and space. Her research group can count on large laboratory facilities dedicated to the testing of microwave photonic systems, (i.e., for both photonics and microwave test setups). The group also has extensive experience in designing and testing integrated microwave photonics systems based on several technological platforms, including Silicon-on-Insulator, Silicon Nitride, Indium Phosphide, Lithium Niobate-on-Insulator. Within MAGNIFY, SSSA will contribute its expertise to application demonstrations of radio-over-fiber (RFoF) applications (WP4) and will join forces with KIT to jointly lead WP4.
EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Prof. Tobias J. Kippenberg has pioneered chip-scale frequency combs and cavity quantum optomechanics. Relevant to MAGNIFY is, in particular, the development of photonic integrated EDWA with single and multiple lanes. He has been Clarivate analytics highly cited physicist since 2014 and has published 10 papers in Nature/Science in the last 5 years. EPFL has coordinated 4 EU projects, including Marie Curie ITN (cQOM, OMT), FET-Proactive (HOT), and FET-Open (TeraSlice). EPFL will provide project management support to LGTF (WP1) given its extensive coordination experience, lead the prototype development (WP3) and work together with EDWATEC on early access demonstrator studies with industry interactive feedback (WP5). Tobias Kippenberg is also entrepreneurially active and has co-founded LIGENTEC.
EDWATEC SA (EDWATEC) is a high technology start-up pursuing the development and exploitation of Erbium-doped photonic integrated circuits for optical amplifiers and lasers.