The European project PIX4life has the ambition to become the world’s first open access pilot line for Photonic Integrated Circuits targeting life science applications in the visible range. These services are offered as Open Access to any interested parties.
Foundry
Services
Technology choice
PIX4life silicon nitride technology is offered with two different flavours: BioPIX (IMEC) and TripleX VIS (LioniX).
Each of these flavours, presents different advantages depending on the application and requirements of the project.
For more details, follow this link where a clear description of these platforms is given, in the form of a webinar as well as different reading material.
Multi-project wafers (MPW) run:
A multi-project wafers run is an excellent manner to manufacture prototypes while maintaining the development cost low. The fabrication is restricted to a standard offering by the foundry.
In MPW, different users share a single wafer, thus sharing the mask and manufacturing costs. PIX4life makes sure your IP is safe and secure, your designs and chips will never be exposed to external parties or other clients.
MPW planning
| Tape-in (design submission deadline) | Expected delivery | |
|---|---|---|
| TriPleX | July 2020 | November 2020 |
| BioPIX300 | September, 7th 2020 | March 2021 |
| BioPIX150 | to be determined | to be determined |
MPW conditions
| Platform | Cell size | Cell copies | Cell cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LioniX | TriPleX | 8 x 24 mm | 4 dies | 8,500€* |
| LioniX | TriPleX | 16 x 24 mm | 2 dies | 8,500€* |
| IMEC | BioPIX | 5.3 x 4.75 mm | 20 dies | 23,000€** |
| IMEC | BioPIX | 10.75 x 4.75 mm or 5.3 x 9.65 mm | 20 dies | 46,000€** |
| IMEC | BioPIX | 10.75 x 9.65 mm | 20 dies | 92,000€** |
* A 10% discount for EU industry customers, and 20% for EU academic customers will be applied until June 2020.
** A 5% discount for eligible academic and research institutions from EU + countries with Full-IC membership of EUROPRACTICE
The process will include assembly of the designs into the masks, fabrication and validation of the wafers, and dicing of the wafers into dies for delivery.
Dedicated wafer
A dedicated wafers is the preferred way to scale up production or when certain requirements cannot be met in the standard offering of MPW runs.
On a dedicated wafers, the complete wafer will be filled with the client’s design and adding extra wafers adds very low extra costs
Design your own PIC
At PIX4life, the foundries have compiled a tested process design kit, or PDK, for users and designers to get the most out of their technology. To request the design manual and PDK you can simply contact us.
Process Design Kit:
The PDK contains all the already designed and tested building blocks of PIX4life for TripleX_VIS (LioniX) and BioPIX300/150 (imec). These building blocks allow a designer to finalize a design faster and with higher confidence.
