Europe’s largest capacity foundry service for PICs created
Ligentec, pioneer in high-performance, low-loss, silicon nitride photonic solutions, and specialty semiconductor producer X-Fab Silicon Foundries have announced a strategic partnership resulting in the large-scale supply of integrated photonic devices.
Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are set to repeat the success story of electronic integrated circuits (ICs). Working with light instead of electrons, PICs will play a key role in tomorrow’s infrastructure for communication, biosensing and transportation.
“Silicon nitride offers superior performance to manage the light in the chip circuitry, with unprecedented low propagation losses and high-power handling,” states Michael Zervas, co-founder of Ligentec. “While there is growing worldwide demand for silicon nitride PICs, the missing piece is a commercial volume foundry that can keep pace with the expected uptake.”
Ligentec has implemented its proprietary, patented, low-loss silicon nitride process technology within X-Fab’s existing high-throughput foundry workflow. It means that Ligentec PICs are now commercially available in high volumes out of Europe, a key requisite enabling the secure and independent supply of the quantities foreseen in relation to sensors for self-driving cars, environment monitoring, quantum computers and an array of other applications.
“This partnership allows us to offer the benefits of our technology to high volume customers,” says Ligentec’s director Thomas Hessler. “X-Fab’s advanced equipment and superior process control will enable us to serve the mass market with elevated performance PICs. Its multiple sites and capacity to deal with 100,000 new 200 mm wafer starts per month gives exceptional supply assurance and almost limitless scope for scaling. The proven track record X-Fab has in the automotive and medical sectors will open up new opportunities for Ligentec.”
“The integrated photonics market has huge potential. We have partnered with Ligentec because it has the highest performance and the most mature offering for passive PICs. This is complemented by a great customer orientation and strong development pipeline, rooted in the company’s long- term R&D relationship with EPFL in Lausanne. We are highly committed to exploring the future possibilities of PICs through our partnership with Ligentec, acting as a pillar of strong growth for X-Fab’s specialty foundry business,” adds Rudi De Winter, CEO of X-Fab.
Thanks to this strategic partnership with X-Fab, Ligentec now takes volume production requests for low-loss silicon nitride PICs, based on 200 mm wafers.
Company
X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries GmbHHaarbergstr. 67
99097 Erfurt
Germany
most read
Indus Engineering segment increases incoming orders
In the 2025 financial year, the export-oriented Engineering segment of Indus Holding generated sales of EUR 583 million, slightly below the previous year (EUR 596.7 million).
ZVEI Calls for Swift Protection of Critical Power Infrastructure
The association has issued a statement in response to the recent attempted attacks on substations in Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia and warns of the consequences for Germany's energy security.
ABB Machine Automation (B&R) Appoints Christian Strahberger as New Division President
He succeeds Florian Schneeberger, who died in a tragic accident in April.
Siemens Consolidates Its Automation Business into a New Unit Called Automation
Rainer Brehm, who previously served as COO of the automation business and CTO of Digital Industries, was appointed president of the new unit.
Global robot density: Western Europe leads ahead of North America and Asia
In the EU-27, the robot density is 231, which is above the global average of 132.