The main objective of this Innovative Training Network (ITN) is to educate 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESR) towards PhD through a joint interdisciplinary research programme. This programme (NETLAS) will educate the ESRs in the rapidly expanding hot topic of tuneable lasers for optical coherence tomography (OCT). Research will be jointly developed across the network to cover 12 technologies, that span interdisciplinary and intersectoral fields, such as: 3 technologies of novel laser devices, 4 technologies of novel optics configurations for tuneable lasers, 3 original signal processing technologies to optimise the utilisation of the novel lasers in practice and 2 over-arching application technologies in OCT for medical imaging and non-destructive testing. The network aims to educate tomorrow’s European industry leaders and innovators by bringing the ESRs together with today’s end users in order to incorporate their research into useful instruments that are fit to respond to societal needs, such as underpinning the health system and non-destructive testing. Beneficiaries in this network are 5 higher-education institutions (HEI)s and 3 companies plus 6 partners, including a HEI research institute with an affiliated eye hospital, a second training hospital and a non profit research institute, For each ESR the training takes place in at least two different institutions, one of them being a HEI and the other giving industrial experience, jointly delivering a coherent combination of specialised and general skills training. This is completed by organising three Summer Schools and an International conference. Each ESR will start by agreeing with the supervisors a career development plan, whose progress will be continuously monitored by supervisors and reported at regular meetings of the supervisory board.

Despite the huge progress by photonics, extended spectral bands at wavelengths below 1100 nm remain heavily underserved in terms of integration solutions. At the same time, the silicon nitride is booming and the lithium niobate is making an impressive comeback in the form of lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI), with both materials being transparent both in the visible and the NIR. With all these viewed as a unique opportunity, LOLIPOP steps in to develop a disruptive platform that will offer the highest integration, modulation and second order nonlinear performance in the entire spectrum from 400 up to 1600 nm, based on the combination of the LNOI and the silicon-nitride (TriPleX) technology. To this end, LOLIPOP will develop die-bonding and micro-transfer-printing methods for low-loss (<0.5 dB) integration of LNOI films on TriPleX without compromise in the functionality of the two platforms. It will also develop a process for growth of Ge photodiodes (PDs) inside pockets and a process for flip-chip bonding of active elements inside recesses on TriPleX. Given the possibility of the Ge-PDs to operate in the entire 400-1600 nm spectrum, and the flexibility of the bonding process to adapt to different actives and wavelengths, the picture of this ultra-wideband technology is complete. LOLIPOP will demonstrate its potential via the development of: 1) The first ever integrated laser Doppler vibrometer at 532 nm with ultra-narrow linewidth (<5 kHz) and ultra-high modulation (6 GHz), 2) The first ever integrated FMCW-LIDAR at 905 nm with ultra-high linear chirp (10 GHz) and optical phased array-based 2D beam scanning, 3) Photonic convolutional neural networks with record scale, computation speed (24 TOPS) and power consumption reduction compared to electronic solutions, and 4) The first ever integrated squeezed-state source with 6 dB squeezing level for quantum applications at 1550 nm. A roadmap for the offering of LOLIPOP technology as commercial service will be prepared.