A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) is a chip that contains optical functionalities. From data communications, through sensing, to optical computing, PICs are central to the current and future digital economy. As the digital transformation is essential to every part of society, demands for PICs will increase. Just as it is possible to produce a chip with millions of transistors on it, it is possible to produce a chip with millions of photonic devices to control and manipulate light. Equipped with the right building blocks, such chips could, for example, efficiently realize computation. However, in practice there are significant challenges:

• Today’s PICs cannot yet deliver the performance (speed, size, and efficiency) required for the upcoming applications, such as 6G, automotive LiDAR, consumer healthcare, artificial intelligence (AI), optical computing, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR).
• PICs are based on complex technological processes, so that they do not yet reach acceptable reliability, scale, and costs.
• Many building blocks are still pre-mature, so that photonic systems on chips (SoCs) are not yet a viable competitor for their electronic counterparts.

How does a plasmonic PIC solve these problems?

Polariton helps creating the future of PICs by

• Offering innovative plasmonic PICs that are naturally 10x faster (500 GHz), 500x smaller (µm scale) and use 10x less energy (fJ/bit) than conventional PIC technologies due to the underlying physical effects.
• Seamlessly integrating plasmonics into silicon photonics on large scale.
• Developing industry compatible building block which we scale from single devices to entire circuits and enabling photonic SoCs by adding further innovative functionality.