Proposals for this call shall:

• establish an (eventually distributed) industrially based (meaning pilot line established in an industrial environment) pilot line for a silicon photonics manufacturing platform (that is the pilot line must cover the full process for silicon photonics circuits (including if possible heterogenous integration aspects for PICs) covering front and back and integration and packaging (SiP) as well as wafer-level-test, chip testing, device testing to industrial standards with special attention to the scalability of the back-end packaging and testing.
• enable breakthroughs in silicon PIC platforms, overcoming their current limitations, by wafer-level heterogeneous integration of CMOS-uncommon materials or processed chiplets and prepare the transfer to the industrial silicon manufacturing platform.
• At least two demonstrators should be built including PICs made on the pilot line covering distinctive high volume applicatiions such as LIDAR technology, consumer medical applications, etc.

This pilot line shall include innovations such as:

• develop innovative approaches to manufacturing techniques for heterogeneous integration, considering judicious choices with respect to scaling, performance, alignment accuracy, agility, reliability, non-recurring engineering costs (NREs), market potential.
• develop associated photonic process design kits (PDKs) of industrial grade and make a start to automated photonics ICs design tools
• develop innovative solutions to packaging and system in package appropriate to PICs