January 27, 2005, Dublin, Ireland and Camarillo, CA--Eblana Photonics and Vitesse Semiconductor have announced a manufacturing relationship for low-threshold, high-quality, single-mode laser diodes on Vitesse's 4" indium phosphide (InP) integrated circuit (IC) fabrication line.
The manufacturing relationship builds on the two companies' previous fabrication of 2.5 Gbps, single wavelength, laser diodes using established InP IC toolsets and processes. Those lasers exhibit single wavelength lasing emission at a wavelength of 1.54 microns with threshold currents of 12 mA at a temperature of 25 degrees C. Side mode suppression ratios (SMSRs) of better than 40 dB were observed with optical emission powers of 20 mW into a single lasing mode.
Vitesse used its standard InP heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) process to fabricate the laser design using Eblana Photonics' unique regrowth-free laser technology platform. The resulting process line production of high-quality laser diodes is expected to:
1. In the short term, permit low-cost manufacture of high quality laser products on a mature electronics fabrication platform using only IC toolsets and processes and their associated process control regime.
2. Enable the required levels of photonics integration to drive the burgeoning rollout of FTTP and Gigabit Ethernet in Access and Enterprise communications applications.
3. Longer term, by integrating mature InP circuit technology with new InP laser technology, create new components and new applications based on integrated photonics and electronics.
"Eblana has solved a key problem in laser technology by developing a device with DFB-like performance and manufactured using standard IC process tools," said Ray Milano, vice president of optical technologies at Vitesse. "Furthermore, since Eblana's technology platform only utilizes standard electronics design rules and mature processes, it achieves performance and product consistency typical of IC products which to date have not been features of Photonics products. This technology will greatly impact the manufacturing and cost of bringing optical transceiver products to the market."
