NOLIMITS · NOvel Large-scale InP-Membrane based Integration Technology & Science

It is the long‐term objective of NOLIMITS to develop a unique technology, that will provide combined electronic and photonic functionality in a single chip and that will overcome the scale and speed limits in today’s photonic integration technology. Our dream is a technology that will be in every laptop and that will contain photonic interconnects and small but ultrafast and ultra low power photonic processors on top of an electronic IC, that contains the large scale but lower speed memory and control functions. While this is a very ambitious and long‐term objective, it is the aim of NOLIMITS to demonstrate the potential of InP Membranes on Silicon (IMOS) for realising this goal up to a level that large companies can be interested in the large‐scale development of the technology. We believe that this can be done by 5 PhD students and postdocs that will be funded from this project, in close cooperation with three PhD students that are presently working on IMOS‐related technology. NOLIMITS will address the following challenges in two subprojects:• Providing proof of concept for integration of a full set of basic photonic components in IMOS technology on top of a CMOS chip which contains advanced electronic functionality.• Developing and demonstrating the technology for an application where the combination of photonics and electronics brings additional functionality.• Integration of plasmonic lasers in IMOS technology and demonstrating THz switching speeds with very low switching powers, that allow for application in ultrafast digital photonic signal processors with up to 1 million lasers.If successful, NOLIMITS will provide a powerful technology for integrating photonics and electronics at a complexity level that exceeds today’s photonic technology by more than three orders. Such a technology will create a whole field of new application and will become a game‐changer in the world of photonic integrated circuits.