STARLight is a major opportunity to establish Europe at the forefront of 300mm Silicon Photonics innovation and thus “Solidify the European Photonics ecosystem and accelerate its industrial deployment”.

The main vision of STARLight is to contribute to European sovereignty relying on the achievement of an efficient and resilient ecosystem and a sustainable society by driving excellence and innovation in the implementation of 300mm silicon photonics manufacturing capacity in Europe. (ST Microelectronics, France).

The main goals of STARLight are:

• To offer Europe a real solution for its independency on the sourcing of Silicon Photonics and other needed Optical Module Compounds (EIC, laser), based on a true European End to End value chain made by European players and tailored to the global market.
• To give Europe the opportunity to move forward with industrial and academic players spanning the value chain by joining in the risk-taking necessary for the growth dynamics of Silicon Photonics optical module in Europe, such as Data Centre including Hyperscalers, Telecom, Automotive Lidar, Inter-Satellites communication, accelerated AI.
• To expand the Photonics European technology platforms family in terms of accessibility, upscaling and high yield, packaging assembly and providing modelling tools to converge on a mainstream simulation flow.
• To enhance the future by leading-edge Silicon Photonics innovation to reach 200Gbaud (400Gbps PAM4//lane) leveraging on heterogeneous material integration.
• Demonstrate the benefit of Silicon Photonics Optical modules sustainability, providing a better energy-saving, limited usage of copper and aluminium materials, and reducing the usage of polluting material and water.

STARLight project makes it possible to promote a concept of collaboration, which is based on an ecosystem bringing together the various actors of the supply chain ranging from the technologies, the circuits providers to the producer of modules and systems.