Abstract

Generic foundry services for electronic ICs can provide all kinds of users with application-specific ICs (ASICs) at a relatively short turn-around time, cheap price, and with minimal design effort. The current trend in photonic integration is to apply this model to the case of photonic ICs (PICs) [1]. The development of a generic foundry process requires a radically different approach than that for a single photonic device. The purpose of a generic PIC foundry is to have a process that integrates as much optical functionality as possible while using a fixed fabrication process and a fixed epitaxial layerstack (InP being the most suited technology in the 1550 wavelength range). The aim of a generic PIC foundry is to address many users and applications at the widest-possible wavelength range.

© 2015 IEEE