Funded by Innovate UK and led by the Compound Semiconductor Centre Ltd, the consortium also included Ffotoneg Ltd, SPTS Technologies Ltd and Cardiff University. Located within an 8-mile radius, and with substantial experience of working together on collaborative projects, the partners were ideally placed to leverage existing supply chain strengths to deliver on this latest scale up opportunity in the heart of the world’s first Compound Semiconductor Cluster in South Wales.
The 12-month project (CHIPIN6), aimed to enable each of the partners to innovate towards offering compound semiconductor photonic solutions on the 6” Indium Phosphide (InP) substrate size. Areas of innovation included design, epitaxy, plasma etch technology and fabrication process developments. InP photonic chips are used as light sources and detectors in applications such as high speed datacoms and telecommunications, data centres, smartphones and displays, environmental and healthcare sensing, and consumer products.