Integrated Photonics

Shaping our future with the power of light

Photonics – the generation, processing and detection of light – is crucial to our future internet and for better healthcare, mobility and security. At TU/e we develop new materials, devices, integrated circuits and systems to create game-changing solutions that enable faster and more reliable data communication at lower energy cost and novel sensors for healthcare, automotive and agrifood applications. This activity is integral part of the research program of the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute.

SPOT ON Integrated Photonics

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State-of-the-art facilities

LiDAR

Sensing the world in 3D with photonics

Light: the essential ingredient for future technology

The exponential increase in data traffic is becoming unsustainable. At the present pace, information technologies will soon be responsible for >10% of the global electricity consumption. Photonics – the technology that uses light to carry information – can come to rescue, by providing low-energy, high-speed data transmission throughout the internet and within data centers. Photonics additionally provides new ways to sense the world around us and is a key enabling technology for healthcare, autonomous driving and smart farming. However, these promises can only be realized if increasingly complex photonic chips can be produced at low cost. Within the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute we perform fundamental and applied research aimed at making this dream come true.

Our job opportunities

"In photonics, with relatively simple steps, you can make great contributions to achieve new things. And TU/e is the best place to do photonics research, since we provide a rich working environment, excellent facilties and ample job opportunities in the Brainport region."
Andrea Fiore, Scientific Director of the TU/e Center for Integrated Photonics

Upcoming events

13 Nov

01 Dec

Bachelor Experience Days

November 13, 2023 / TU/e campus

29 Nov

Available Energy

PhD defense Ralf Johannes Josephus Mackenbach

November 29, 2023 / TU/e Campus

29 Nov

Energy-Efficient Urban Rail Transit Operations

PhD defense Kang Huang

November 29, 2023 / TU/e Campus

29 Nov

The Artificial Womb

November 29, 2023 12:40 PM / Blauwe Zaal

29 Nov

Is AGI an existential risk?

November 29, 2023 5:30 PM / TU Eindhoven

29 Nov

Multiscale modelling of streamers

PhD defense Dennis Derek Bouwman

November 29, 2023 / TU/e Campus

29 Nov

Interactive object learning and perception with vision and touch

EAISI lecture by visiting professor Lorenzo Natale

November 29, 2023 10:00 AM / TU/e campus | Neuron building, room 0.262

30 Nov

Generative Artificial Intelligence

Holst Memorial Lecture 2023

November 30, 2023 10:00 AM / Blauwe zaal

30 Nov

Building reactive behaviors for robotics with behavior trees

EAISI lecture 2 by visiting professor Lorenzo Natale

November 30, 2023 10:00 AM / TU/e campus | Neuron building, room 1.120

01 Dec

Fluid limits and optimal task assignment policies for locally pooled service systems

PhD defense Diego Elias Goldsztajn García

December 1, 2023 / TU/e Campus

01 Dec

With Gert-Jan Nabuurs | WUR

EIRES Lunch Lecture

12h00-13h00 | with Gert-Jan Nabuurs (WUR)

04 Dec

The Gate | Walk-in hours 4 December

Join our Walk-in hours to get expert insights on IP, financing, insurances, legal advice, and more!

Accessible and low-cost design of photonic chips with newly launched industrial pilot manufacturing line

Future technologies in the fields of communication, sensing, and quantum computing look set to be based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs). To reduce development and prototyping costs for companies working on PICs, access to foundry manufacturing of PICs is essential. The JePPIX consortium, which was established in 2006, has just launched a new Pilot Manufacturing service to provide companies with an accessible and low-cost service for the design and pre-production of PIC devices that can help accelerate the development of such devices for a wide range of societal applications.

Related research groups

The seven TU/e groups working on Integrated Photonics together cover three fields:

Photonic materials and devices
Photonic integrated circuits
Photonic systems

Department of Applied Physics

Advanced Nanomaterials & Devices

It is fascinating how materials properties at the nanoscale can be radically changed by means of size, crystal structure or surface states.…

Department of Electrical Engineering

Electro-Optical Communication

We have a vision of a globe-spanning ubiquitous optical network, a sustainable and reliable communication infrastructure for users and…

Departments of Applied Physics / Biomedical Engineering

Molecular Biosensing

The MBx group develops technologies based on micro- and nanoparticles for monitoring patients and for treating diseases. Towards this goal,…

Department of Electrical Engineering

Photonic Integration

Provide major contributions to photonic integration and the associated applications with a particular focus on indium phosphide technology.

Department of Applied Physics

Photonics and Semiconductor Nanophysics

We explore the novel physics and applications emerging from the interaction of light with nanoscale matter.

Department of Applied Physics

Physics of Nanostructures

We explore novel ways of controlling the electron spin and magnetic textures at the nanoscale for a wide range of applications.

Department of Applied Physics

Plasma & Materials Processing

Our scientific objective is to obtain atomic-level understanding of the interaction of plasmas and reactive gases with materials in the…

Optical Sensing Challenge

Do you have an industrial sensing problem? Do you want to know if optics/photonics can provide a solution? We can check it for you! We set up teams of PhD/Master students to brainstorm over possible optics-based solutions to a sensing problem. This is done at no cost for the involved companies, which get access to the results and have the opportunity to start a collaboration with the TU/e. See here for the details on the way of working.

Interested? Send us an email!

Photonics and spectroscopy appear promising technologies for measuring conventional egg properties such as shell thickness and egg quality automatically and at scale. Fascinating what the team was able to come up with in a few days. (Bram Visser, Hendrix Genetics)

News

November 27, 2023

Explaining quantum physics to teenagers

Tim Bouchée defended his PhD thesis at the Eindhoven School of Education, which is part of the Department of Applied Physics and Science Education, on November...

August 22, 2023

First Eindhoven-Taiwan Summer School on semiconductors and photonics to take place at TU/e

The inaugural summer school brings together leaders from academia and industry from the Netherlands and Taiwan, and offers critical insights on current and...

More news

Elham Fadaly operating the Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE). This machine grows the nanowires with hexagonal silicon-germanium shells. Archive photo: Sicco van Grieken (SURF).

Elham Fadaly wins Martinus van Marum Prize for breakthrough in photonics

July 5, 2023

Award-winning photonic sensor chip enables a materials sensor in everyone’s pocket

April 17, 2023

Queen Máxima shows great interest during photonics visit at EHCI (in pictures)

February 16, 2023

Integrated optical isolators and circulators on an InP membrane platform

December 21, 2022

Center for Integrated Photonics Eindhoven

The Center for Integrated Photonics Eindhoven (IPI) carries out research in materials, devices, circuits and systems enabling novel applications in communications, computing and sensing. The Center is funded by a 10-years NWO-Gravitation grant and is embedded in the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute. The Center’s ultimate mission is to break the current limits in the energy consumption of information systems, and thereby contributing to a sustainable information society. The groups participating to the Center provide the expertise needed to achieve this.

Meet our principal investigators

Full Professor

Research Projects

Our research in the area of Integrated Photonics covers the whole chain from materials to system engineering. We develop and integrate new materials and components on the nanoscale, connect micro-photonic integrated circuits and micro-electronic integrated circuits, and devise solutions to enable the next generation 5G network.

Research project

Interreg - OIP4NWE

Research Project

PIXAPP

Provides the full range of assembly and integration technologies needed to package these multi functional PIC devices, across all stages of manufacturing – from prototyping to medium scale manufacture.

Research Project

Twilight

Towards the neW era of 1.6 Tb/s System-In-Package transceivers for datacenter appLIcations exploiting wafer-scale co-inteGration of InP membranes and InP-HBT elecTronics.

Our Partners

Our technology and ideas have found their way to the market, through collaborations with large companies and spin-offs. To make this even simpler, we have created a national integrated photonics ecosystem, PhotonDelta, and a European platform for photonic integration, JePPIX. On the right you can read some of our success stories.

Meet some of our partners