MASSTART – Mass manufacturing of transceivers for the Terabit/s era

MASSTART is an EU-funded H2020 project pursued by a consortium of renown European organizations. Coordinated by the Fraunhofer IZM, it is due to run from January 2019 for 36 months.

The inherent issue of limited throughput and the associated high cost in photonics assembly & test processes is unsurprisingly a major hurdle to the introduction of new photonic developments into the consumer market, and one that can only be solved by cost-efficient assembly solutions. The MASSTART project will tackle exactly this problem with a well-chosen consortium dedicated to the development of a high-throughput assembly line for transceivers for the Terabit/s era. Briefly:

• MASSTART aims to provide a holistic transformation to the assembly and characterization of high-speed photonic transceivers, including a six-fold improvement in throughput. By bringing the cost down to €1/Gb/s or even lower in mass production, this will help guarantee European leadership in the photonics industry for the next decade.

• ficonTEC will develop concepts and assembly solutions for the automated mass production of photonic devices. A key aspect is the concatenation of different assembly stations into a single integrated production line with automated part handling. Orchestrating the whole via a higher-ranking process control will achieve the required high throughput.

The developments performed within MASSTART will allow ficonTEC to maintain its technological leadership within the photonics assembly segment, provide better understanding of future industry demands, and thereby strengthen our position in the market – all while helping to guarantee European leadership within the global photonics industry.

More details can be found at Fraunhofer IZM and via the EC’s CORDIS website.