Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre

A pure play III-V semiconductor foundry

Your partner in photonic
device fabrication

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The NRC has hired an external advisor to undertake a valuation process and explore options to further enhance the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC) capabilities to serve the photonics sector in Canada. Photonics will play a key role in meeting growing demand for high performance computing by improving the efficiency and reducing the energy consumption of data centres. The CPFC is an important asset in supporting and growing the photonics sector in Canada.

Regular business operations continue during this period and CPFC employees and clients will experience no interruptions.

The Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC) is the only end-to-end pure play compound semiconductor wafer manufacturing facility in Canada. The CPFC works with clients from start to finish on design refinement, fabrication and testing of compound semiconductor wafers. As a pure play facility, we focus on process and manufacturing excellence to help our clients bring their innovative designs to market.

At the CPFC, we partner on manufacturing, new product introduction and volume manufacturing all under one roof, reducing your non-recurring engineering costs and speeding up the timeline from concept to commercialization.

We specialize in compound semiconductor fabrication for photonic components that are crucial for fibre optic networks, defence and aerospace, medical imaging, data centres and advanced AI computational infrastructure. These components are integrated into systems that control the movement of photons (particles of electromagnetic energy, such as light, radio waves and X-rays) in different ways, such as generating, modulating, amplifying and receiving optical signals.

Our advanced engineering and manufacturing services include creating and testing photonic devices, working with materials such as indium phosphide (InP), gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN). By connecting photonics manufacturing with technology commercialization, our advanced facility and experienced workforce offer industrial-grade semiconductor foundry solutions for both active and passive photonics applications, ranging from discrete devices to photonic integrated circuits.

Whether working with your existing designs or developing new ones, we leverage our extensive metrology and quality assurance tools with our purpose-built manufacturing execution system (MES) software to ensure precise data collection, material tracking and manufacturing fidelity.

Location

1200 Montreal Road
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6

Our facility

The Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre - Transcript

Located at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, the CPFC has over 20 years of experience, operating successfully as a commercial-scale foundry with expertise in various industrial and academic fields.

Our 40,000 square foot facility includes 11,000 square feet of class 100/1000 clean room space, offering a comprehensive range of key processes and supporting activities. An additional 8,000 square feet is currently under construction to expand our capabilities and add capacity.

We currently work with three- and four-inch wafers and plan to fully transition to four-inch processing by 2026. Our unique process IP includes over 4,000 process steps, organized into blocks for the custom fabrication of client designs, significantly enhancing the performance and reliability of advanced photonic devices.

Since 2021, the Government of Canada has invested over $115 million to expand and modernize the CPFC, boosting its capacity as the nation's only end-to-end pure play compound semiconductor foundry. In 2023, construction started on a new 8,000 square-foot building with state-of-the-art facilities, set to enhance global competitiveness and support AI infrastructure, tele/data communications and defense supply chains.

Learn more about the CPFC facility expansion.

Our services

Our experienced team will begin with either our designs or those supplied by you to assess your requirements and recommend the appropriate wafer structure and fabrication process for the desired device performance.

We offer III-V pure play foundry services and end-to-end fabrication of photonic devices, photonic integrated circuits and gallium nitride photonics and electronics.

In addition to fabrication, the CPFC offers prototyping and testing services, with a suite of quality control and failure analysis tools for mid- and post-process quality assurance and troubleshooting.

The CPFC serves a wide range of clients, from small and medium-sized enterprises to multinational enterprises, including fabless companies (outsourcing fabrication), fab-lite companies with partial fabrication capabilities and those with their own captive fabs (in-house fabrication facilities).

For more details about our technical services, visit foundry services for photonic devices.