On Thursday, December 13th, CITC signed the Photonics covenant. In this covenant a total investment of 236 million euros is confirmed by the government, a number of provinces and regions, companies and knowledge institutes; all under the flag of PhotonDelta. By signing this covenant an amount of € 1.25 – € 2 million becomes available for the photonics cluster within the CITC in Nijmegen. Their goal: accelerating the development of integrated photonics.

The combination of new photonics chips with existing electronics chips creates major challenges in the integration and packaging of chips. By integrating these technologies on one chip, the necessary bridge can be created between light and electricity on one chip. In the CITC the knowledge and experience that has been gained over the last 50 years, in the field of chip integration and chip packaging in the Dutch semiconductor industry, comes together and will be used to help solve these challenges even faster.

Thanks to the collaboration between the two Photonics Integration Technology Centers (PITC’s) in Eindhoven and Twente and the CITC in Nijmegen, companies and knowledge institutes in these three regions form an open network in which new chips for ever-changing applications can be developed quickly.