Provides a one-stop-shop for world-class engineering and manufacturing services, commercial-grade prototyping and pilot-run production facilities
The Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC) can fabricate devices in a variety of materials including gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP), gallium nitride (GaN), silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and other substrates. We offer single-step foundry services or end-to-end fabrication of photonic devices, photonic integrated circuits and gallium nitride electronics. The CPFC can also develop new process technologies for our clients’ devices.
Starting with CPFC- or customer-supplied wafers, our experienced design team examines the client's requirements and advises on a suitable wafer structure and fabrication process to achieve the device performance necessary for their application. We can use either client-supplied photomasks or develop a new set of masks for an entire process sequence. A custom-designed manufacturing execution system is used for data collection and material tracking throughout the fabrication run. This helps ensure that all fabricated wafers are fully characterized and meet the required specifications.
We offer a fully equipped 40,000 square foot facility with 11,000 square feet of class 1000/100 clean room space that provides a comprehensive suite of key processes and supporting ancillary activities.
We offer the following technical services:
- Foundry services including chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), lithography, plasma etching and back end processing
- Design and modeling for devices and circuits to improve yield, overall design, and circuit performance
- Test and characterization including testing for optical and electronic devices, and surface and materials analysis
For companies that fabricate wafers in house or that have them outsourced to an external foundry, we offer a consulting service for third-party evaluation/analysis of the resulting wafers.
- Information and communication technologies and media
- Manufacturing and processing
Specialized labs and equipment
| Equipment | Function |
|---|---|
| Ebeam direct write | Used for patterning of wafers |
| Holography | Used for patterning of wafers |
| Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) Etch | Fully automated etching of semiconductor and dielectric materials |
| Reactive-ion etching (RIE) Plasma Etch | Fully automated etching of dielectric materials |
| Ebeam Evaporation | Comprehensive metal deposition for ohmic and interconnect metallisation requirements |
| Photonic modeling software and test hardware | Photonic device modeling, test, characterisation and reliability capability |
| Metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) reactor | Used for Base growth and Selective Area Growth (SAG), Overgrowth (OG) epitaxy |
| Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) reactor | Used for epitaxial growth of Gallium antimonide (GaSb) materials |
| Chemical Beam Epitaxy (CBE) reactor | Used for the growth of Quantum Dot materials |
Additional information
| Title | URL |
|---|---|
| Highlights of the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre | https://nrc.canada.ca/en/research-development/research-collaboration/highlights-canadian-photonics-… |
| A bright future for new fibre optic devices | https://nrc.canada.ca/node/432 |