EV Group (EVG), a leading supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for semiconductor manufacturing, has announced active engagements across the rapidly growing Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) ecosystem. The company is deploying its comprehensive advanced packaging, nanoimprint lithography (NIL), and wafer-level process solutions to resolve critical manufacturing bottlenecks for hyperscale data centers, artificial intelligence clusters, and high-performance computing (HPC) networks.
As modern compute demands escalate, conventional electrical interconnects are approaching physical thresholds. Copper traces struggle to deliver the bandwidth, latency, and power efficiency required by massive data processing workloads. To circumvent these interconnect bottlenecks, the semiconductor industry is aggressively shifting toward CPO architectures. By co-packaging photonic integrated circuits (PICs), laser sources, and electronic compute silicon into a single high-density package, optical signals are brought directly alongside processors. This integration substantially reduces transmission latency while curbing data center energy consumption.
However, fabricating CPO devices requires integrating dissimilar materials—including silicon, III-V compound semiconductors, and emerging electro-optic crystals—each possessing distinct thermal, chemical, and mechanical characteristics. EV Group directly targets these manufacturing challenges through its established portfolio of wafer bonding, nanoimprint lithography, and thin-wafer handling tools, backed by dedicated process development facilities.
Through its NILPhotonics Competence Center and Heterogeneous Integration Competence Center (HICC), EVG enables customers to design, optimize, and qualify complex optical manufacturing flows in production-grade environments. This collaborative model allows chipmakers to de-risk fabrication before scaling to high-volume manufacturing (HVM).
“Co-packaged optics represents a major technology transition for AI hardware, but it also introduces significant integration challenges,” said Dr. Bernd Dielacher, Director of Business Development at EVG. “Integrating photonic and electronic components through advanced packaging technologies demands comprehensive process expertise rather than just point solutions. 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.”
EVG’s process suite covers the foundational steps necessary for next-generation optical packaging. The company’s hybrid bonding solutions facilitate low-parasitic, ultra-fine-pitch interconnects between PICs and electronic integrated circuits (EICs). Concurrently, its fusion bonding platforms enable heterogeneous integration of III-V materials for native laser fabrication and advanced electro-optic thin films like lithium niobate (TFLN) and barium titanate (BTO). EVG also applies oxide-free, room-temperature bonding to ensure transparent optical interfaces and integrate high-thermal-conductivity heat spreaders like diamond and silicon carbide (SiC).
For optical coupling, EVG utilizes scalable nanoimprint lithography to manufacture precision grating couplers, vertical optical couplers, and beam-shaping elements that ensure efficient light transmission between chips and optical fibers.
Looking ahead to fully integrated 3D photonic-electronic architectures, EVG will present its latest manufacturing milestones in a technical presentation titled “Enabling Scalable CPO Architectures Through Nanoimprint Lithography and Direct Bonding” at the Heterogeneous Integration Global Summit during SEMICON Taiwan 2026.
