Eindhoven Unveils Major Facility to Mass-Produce Light-Based Microchips

2026-04-14 semicon

Eindhoven, Tuesday 14 April 2026
A €65 million Eindhoven facility will mass-produce light-based microchips capable of 1.2 petabits per second, halving production costs and strengthening Europe’s vital semiconductor supply chain by 2027.

Scaling Up Production and Driving Down Costs

The High Tech Campus Eindhoven is transforming a currently vacant plot into a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility spearheaded by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) [2]. Scheduled for an official opening in May 2027, the facility aims to be fully operational by 2028, with an ambitious production target of 10 million photonic chips per year [2]. The total construction cost is valued at €65 million, with the highly specialised cleanroom machinery required for the chip line accounting for €62 million, representing 95.385 per cent of the total budget [2].

The Technological Leap: Speed Meets Sustainability

Unlike traditional semiconductor processors that rely on electrons, photonic chips utilise light to transmit data, offering a paradigm shift in both speed and energy efficiency [1][7]. Prototypes emerging from the Eindhoven ecosystem have already demonstrated staggering data transmission rates exceeding 1.2 petabits per second on a single chip [1]. Dr Maria ten Berge, a senior researcher at the facility, notes that the boundary between photonics and silicon fabrication is dissolving, redefining how light and matter coexist at a mass-production scale [1].

Securing the European Supply Chain

The establishment of this pilot line is not occurring in isolation; it requires a highly specialised supply chain. Just two days ago, on 12 April 2026, TNO published European tenders to equip the new facility [3][5]. One such tender, with a submission deadline of 26 May 2026 [alert! ‘Tender deadlines are subject to potential extensions or administrative delays’], seeks an X-Ray Diffraction system for the 6-inch wafers [3]. Another tender, valued at an estimated €1.9 million excluding VAT, is for a metal backend sputter system capable of processing at least 3.2 wafers per hour, equating to an annual capacity of 20,000 wafers [5].

Strategic Autonomy in a Global Power Struggle

The strategic implications of Eindhoven’s photonic advancements extend far beyond regional economic growth. Jeroen Dijsselbloem recently highlighted at the Common Ground for Innovation Awards that chip production has become the “battlefield of global power” [4]. By mastering chip-scale monolithic integration and on-chip optical modulation, the Eindhoven facility is positioning Europe to lead in next-generation technologies such as high-performance computing, secure quantum key distribution (QKD), and optical neural networks for artificial intelligence [1].

Sources & Ecosystem Partners

Semiconductor manufacturing Integrated photonics