Pho­ton­ics for the fu­ture: Bran­den­burg's PICS4SENS re­search project launched

PICS4^SENS, launched on 1 July 2024, has set it­self an am­bi­tious goal: to in­crease the tech­no­log­i­cal ma­tu­rity of pho­tonic in­te­grated cir­cuits (PICs) and pave the way for com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion in sen­sor tech­nol­ogy. Over a pe­riod of four years, the re­search con­sor­tium will re­ceive a total of 3.4 mil­lion euros from the StaF-​Verbund to sup­port the strength­en­ing of tech­no­log­i­cal and application-​oriented re­search in re­search al­liances of sci­en­tific in­sti­tu­tions in the state of Bran­den­burg. This is fi­nanced by the Eu­ro­pean Re­gional De­vel­op­ment Fund (ERDF).

The joint project PICS4^SENS unites the AIP - Leib­niz In­sti­tute for As­tro­physics and the IHP – Leib­niz In­sti­tute for High Per­for­mance Mi­cro­elec­tron­ics with the in­noF­SPEC trans­fer lab­o­ra­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Pots­dam. The goal is to de­velop a spec­tro­graph "on-​a-chip". This in­volves the minia­tur­i­sa­tion of vo­lu­mi­nous and ex­pen­sive high-​performance op­tics in a clas­sic de­sign onto a tiny pho­tonic chip.

Pho­ton­ics is a mod­ern tech­nol­ogy that utilises the con­duc­tion of pho­tons (light) in wave­guides, anal­o­gous to the con­duc­tion of elec­trons (elec­tric cur­rent) in elec­tron­ics. While pho­tonic in­te­grated cir­cuits (PICs) are al­ready es­tab­lished in data cen­tres and data com­mu­ni­ca­tion, their ap­pli­ca­tion in spec­troscopy and sen­sor tech­nol­ogy is still in its in­fancy.

The sci­en­tists in the AIP's As­tropho­ton­ics sec­tion have achieved a lead­ing in­ter­na­tional po­si­tion in this field and have al­ready de­vel­oped and de­ployed var­i­ous gen­er­a­tions of PICs for ap­pli­ca­tions in spec­troscopy and in­ter­fer­om­e­try. This is what they con­tribute to the PICS4^SENS re­search project.

IHP is sup­ple­ment­ing the project with its ex­per­tise in com­bin­ing pho­tonic and elec­tronic func­tion­al­i­ties on one chip. "IHP is a pi­o­neer in CMOS-​integrated wave­guide de­vel­op­ment in Ger­many and Eu­rope. As early as 2010, nanowave­guides were reg­u­larly pro­duced in our pilot line as part of the 'Sil­i­con Pho­ton­ics' joint lab with TU Berlin," says IHP project man­ager Prof Lars Zim­mer­mann. Nu­mer­ous cur­rent IHP re­search projects in the field of pho­ton­ics re­flect the fact that the in­sti­tute is a sought-​after de­vel­op­ment part­ner that also strives for com­mer­cial util­i­sa­tion. "For this rea­son, we are very pleased to be de­vel­op­ing a new type of tech­nol­ogy plat­form for the wide range of ap­pli­ca­tions in op­ti­cal sen­sor tech­nol­ogy as part of the STaF project PICS4^SENS," adds Prof Lars Zim­mer­mann.

In ad­di­tion to its use in as­tro­phys­i­cal in­stru­ments, the tech­nol­ogy has ex­cel­lent po­ten­tial for in­no­va­tions in areas such as agri­cul­tural tech­nol­ogy, mo­bil­ity, health­care, food tech­nol­ogy and chem­istry. These are fu­ture top­ics that are pri­ori­tised by the in­noBB2025 plus in­no­va­tion strat­egy and the mas­ter plan of the op­tics and pho­ton­ics clus­ter for Berlin and Bran­den­burg.

"With the Leib­niz In­sti­tute for High Per­for­mance Mi­cro­elec­tron­ics (IHP) in Frank­furt (Oder) and the Leib­niz In­sti­tute for As­tro­physics Pots­dam (AIP), the state of Bran­den­burg has two top per­form­ers in in­ter­na­tional re­search," em­pha­sises AIP project man­ager Mar­tin Roth and un­der­lines:  In co­op­er­a­tion with the in­noF­SPEC trans­fer lab­o­ra­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Pots­dam, the PICS4SENS project has ex­cel­lent pre­req­ui­sites for fur­ther ex­pand­ing and util­is­ing our tech­no­log­i­cal lead."

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