PNO Innovation partner of the Horizon Europe project PHOENIX

Collaborative research towards next-generation encryption and computing hardware

All partners will work together and collaborate during the next 3 years ,starting from the 1st September 2022,  to create building blocks for the next generation of encryption and computing hardware.They will leverage compact photonic integrated circuits (PIC) offering a continuous and efficient control over optical signals. The PIC chips are based on Lumiphase’s proprietary technology, and enhanced with novel functionalities using materials developed at KUL and UPV.

Advancing epitaxial technology and materials integration

Epitaxial technology will be advanced through the realization and upscaling of high-quality oxide thin-films. The developed technology will be used to demonstrate its benefits in four high-impact emerging applications:

1. fully homomorphic encryption (Optalysys, IBM Research),
2. 5G infrastructure (Optalysys),
3. inference of deep neural networks (IBM Research), and
4. training of deep neural networks (IBM Research).

The project has four main objectives:

• to provide novel photonic technologies with enhanced functionalities thanks to the integration of VOx and BTO
• to provide a BTO/SiN waveguide platform for the manufacturing of PICs, and an upgraded version integrating VOx with improved performance and scalability
• to build up the demonstrators
• to advance the understanding, realization, and scaling of high-quality oxide thin films through molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on large-area substrates

Validation, benchmarking and market preparation

The validation of the developed technologies will be completed with an extrapolation to benchmark against representative existing systems and a roadmap for photonic-electronic integration. The project will perform a market analysis and a techno-economic evaluation to define business models and exploitation plans that ensure the sustainability of the PHOENIX platform to reduce innovation-to market-time and R&I costs for disruptive high-tech SMEs and maximize the impact of the 4 user cases demonstrators.

Learn more about the PHOENIX project

Check the PHOENIX project website for more information.