Scalable Emitter Photonic Integrated Circuits on an Open‐Access Indium Phosphide Foundry

We present an easy access prototype solution using Fraunhofer‐HHI's open‐access indium phosphide photonic integrated circuits (PIC) platform. The process design kit enabled generic multiproject wafer process co‐integrates low‐loss passive components with gain, modulation, and detection. A high‐speed 80 GBaud traveling‐wave Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) is a key building block for emitter PICs. Accordingly, we demonstrate wafer‐scale, all‐electrical predicing tests using an MZM integrated with an on‐chip distributed‐feedback laser and photodiode. To showcase the platform's breadth, we highlight three emitter PICs. A widely tunable electro‐optic comb generator with a 20‐dB comb bandwidth of 480 GHz, a 670 MHz low‐repetition‐rate extended‐cavity mode‐locked laser, and a monolithic tunable ring laser with a 40 nm single‐mode tuning range and a 8.2 kHz intrinsic linewidth. All three PIC examples enable data‐rate scaling in optical communication by either increasing the number of channels or by increased symbol rate. Lastly, we present a convenient packaging solution that shortens lead time for prototype‐testing.