IIT Madras launches 2 indigenously developed silicon photonics products

New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras on Saturday launched two indigenously developed silicon photonics products, a first for India.

The products designed and developed indigenously at CoE-CPPICS at the IIT Madras can be quickly adopted by the market.

“Indigenously developed field deployable silicon photonic-based quantum random number generator (QRNG) module is a pride for India. The product has been delivered to DRDO to help in advanced quantum cryptography,” said S. Krishnan, IAS, Secretary, MeitY, while congratulating CoE-CPPICS.

The two products launched during the occasion include the Fibre-Array Unit (FAU) attachment tool for Photonic Chip Packaging and the silicon photonic QRNG (Quantum Random Number Generator).

The QRNG module will be available commercially for potential customers through the CPPICS spin-off start-up “LightOnChip”.

The key applications of QRNG are IT security for military and defence, Cryptographic algorithms, Quantum key distribution (QKD), Scientific Modelling and Simulations, Financial transactions/ Blockchain/ OTP, Gaming Applications, the Insititute said

“Silicon Photonics is an emerging technology that will certainly help design much more efficient and complex hardware for the future. I am very happy that the Silicon Photonics CoE-CPPICS Centre at IIT Madras has now come out with demonstrable products that can be quickly adopted by the market. We hope that multiple such products will continue to come in the future,” said Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras.

Photonic packaging and assembly are a complex and multi-disciplinary design and manufacturing process. To make a Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC)-enabled module perform according to specification, sub-micron precision alignment and bonding process are required.

At the same time, precise thermal management is required to maintain the thermo-optic stability of the signals.

CoE-CPPICS aims to provide better solutions for microwave and quantum photonics applications such as advanced photonic processors to be used in high-performance RF transceivers, scalable linear optical quantum computing processors for the next-generation qubit computation, and chip-level quantum key generation and distribution circuits, etc.

CPPICS is actively developing indigenous PIC design rules and hardware infrastructure for precision packaging for system-level applications.

--IANS

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