(EV Group: Sankt Florian am Inn, Austria) -- EV Group (EVG), a leading provider of innovative process solutions and expertise serving leading-edge and future semiconductor designs and chip integration schemes, is actively engaged with customers and partners within the rapidly evolving co-packaged optics (CPO) ecosystem to support the needs of hyperscale data centers, AI infrastructure, and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

Drawing on decades of expertise in advanced packaging, heterogeneous integration, and photonics manufacturing, EVG supports multiple stages of the CPO manufacturing value chain, from process development through high-volume manufacturing (HVM).

Co-packaged optics drives new manufacturing requirements

Driven by exponential growth in AI workloads and hyperscale data center infrastructure, the semiconductor industry is increasingly adopting CPO architectures to overcome the bandwidth, latency, power efficiency, and signal integrity limitations associated with conventional copper interconnects. CPO brings optical I/O closer to compute by combining photonic integrated circuits (PICs), lasers, and optical structures within the same package. Because these components are made from different materials with different physical and manufacturing properties, integrating them at increasingly higher densities requires new manufacturing approaches.

EVG addresses these challenges through its broad portfolio of wafer bonding, nanoimprint lithography, and thin-wafer processing technologies, supported by the company’s NILPhotonics Competence Center and Heterogeneous Integration Competence Center (HICC). These facilities enable customers and partners to develop, optimize, and validate new product designs and manufacturing processes in a production-relevant environment before transferring them to HVM, helping accelerate time to market while reducing implementation risk.

“Co-packaged optics represents a major technology transition for AI hardware, but it also introduces significant integration challenges, requiring the integration of photonic and electronic components through advanced packaging technologies that demand comprehensive process expertise rather than just point solutions,” says Dr. Bernd Dielacher, director of business development at EVG. “By combining decades of experience across these disciplines with close collaboration through our Competence Centers, EVG helps customers develop, optimize, and validate complete manufacturing processes from early development through HVM, enabling the successful deployment of next-generation CPO architectures.”

Comprehensive process expertise for CPO manufacturing

EVG’s process portfolio addresses numerous critical manufacturing requirements throughout the CPO ecosystem. Hybrid bonding enables low-parasitic integration of PICs and electronic integrated circuits (EICs) to support future bandwidth requirements, while fusion bonding enables heterogeneous integration of III-V semiconductor materials for laser fabrication as well as emerging modulation materials such as thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) and barium titanate (BTO). Oxide-free room-temperature bonding ensures low-loss, optically transparent interfaces and integration of heat-spreader materials such as diamond and silicon carbide (SiC) for effective heat transfer through interfaces.

Nanoimprint lithography provides a scalable manufacturing approach for grating couplers, vertical optical coupling elements, and beam-shaping elements that facilitate efficient out-of-plane light coupling for chip-to-chip and chip-to-fiber optical interconnects, as well as wafer-level optics used in micro LED lens packaging. Additional capabilities, including temporary bonding and debonding, support wafer thinning for laser diode fabrication, and advanced packaging applications.

Looking beyond CPO, the industry is expected to transition toward optical I/O chiplet architectures and advanced 3D photonic-electronic integration, enabling even tighter co-integration of silicon photonics, CMOS electronics, and laser sources within highly scalable optical interconnect platforms. EVG is well positioned to support both today’s CPO implementations and future optical I/O architectures, extending established electronic integration concepts to the next generation of photonic-electronic systems.

EV Group addresses critical manufacturing challenges for next-generation co-packaged optics through its broad portfolio of wafer bonding, nanoimprint lithography, and thin-wafer processing technologies, supported by its NILPhotonics Competence Center and Heterogeneous Integration Competence Center. Source: EV Group.