OneChip Photonics announces foundry relationship with GCS

OFC/NFOEC 2013, CANADA: OneChip Photonics is working with Global Communication Semiconductors (GCS), an ISO-certified premier pure-play compound semiconductor wafer foundry, whereby GCS is providing a complete range of Indium Phosphide (InP) wafer processing services to OneChip. OneChip uses these InP wafers to produce its Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for the Data Center Interconnect (DCI) and Passive Optical Network (PON) markets.

OneChip’s unique, regrowth-free, Multi-Guide Vertical Integration (MGVI) platform eliminates the need for multiple epitaxial growth steps. This enables OneChip to decouple epitaxial growth and wafer processing, while outsourcing both functions to independent, pure-play commercial foundries.

Under this fabless model, OneChip has been working with GCS to process its OneChip-designed 4-inch InP-based wafers. This leverages the infrastructure and expertise GCS has gained through serving high-volume radio frequency (RF) electronics markets.

GCS’s foundry services, based on its state-of-the-art Opto and Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (HBT) processes in Indium Phosphide, are a perfect match to OneChip’s fabless model, which is built around its regrowth-free PIC platform. Further, GCS’s Opto and HBT and OneChip’s PIC technologies share the same process and provide a unique Opto-Electronic Integrated Circuit (OEIC) platform. This, for the first time, enables both electronic and photonic integration on one substrate, within the same commercially available fabrication process.