Centre for Promotion of Additive Manufacturing: Optical Computing Chips (OCC)

Optical computational chips and photonic devices finds application in various fields of technologies such as communication, computation, healthcare, automation, sensor and defence. However, although they have shown plethora of applications, their industrial viability is mainly limited by their fabrication process which involves presence of foundries, numerous process-equipments and steps. In recent years, Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes are bringing fundamental change in how manufacturing is carried out in many sectors due to its ability for scalable, cost effective and sustainable fabrication process. AM is an enabler for digital manufacturing which has capability in producing products directly from design data by adding layers of material to obtain the final shape with minimal wastage. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has initiated a centre on Additive Manufacturing based Cost Effective Optical Computing Chips at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) in collaboration with Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), Pune.

The objective of the centre is to design and fabricate global state of the art 3D printer to achieve sub-micron resolution, indigenous materials for printing and to design and fabricate optical devices for computation. The centre is expected to achieve self-sustenance and focus on developing indigenous materials and machine technologies for photonics manufacturing sector. The centre is also bringing opportunities for Indian companies to develop their own AM material and machine technologies for global market at much reduced R&D cost for any sector (not limited to photonics) such as aerospace, medical, automotive etc. The centre is also going to train manpower to support growth of AM economy in India.