Technical Insight
Opto Speed expansion leads to three new facilities (Fiber Optics News)
Switzerland-based Opto Speed is expanding in three locations. The vertically integrated manufacturer of high-speed optoelectronic components is responding to the increasing demand for optoelectronic chips, as used in a variety of applications. The two main markets for Opto Speed are telecom (47% of sales) and datacom (38%) applications, with modest sales (around 14%) into test and measurement applications (see ). The company has now officially opened its Swiss headquarters in Mezzovico near the Italian border, which includes a 15 000 sq. ft automated manufacturing line for the packaging and testing of optical chips. The company will also open a new manufacturing and R&D center located in Rschlikon, near Zrich, Switzerland. The 50 000 sq. ft site will include class-100 cleanrooms and a dedicated test facility. Rschlikon will have an initial annual installed capacity of 10 million optical chips, which is set to increase to 45 million within one year. Opto Speed has also added an R&D operation in Rome, Italy. "The new Rschlikon facility includes cleanrooms and equipment for optoelectronic semiconductor production, test, burn-in and qualification, as well as development labs and expanded office space," said president and CEO Roberto Dall Ara. "This site will enable us to continue our aggressive development, hiring and manufacturing ramp-up." Background and products Opto Speed was founded in 1995 as a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. It already operates production facilities at both ETH and in Darmstadt, Germany the latter a result of the acquisition in 1999 of Deutsche Telekom s IIIV semiconductor group. The Darmstadt group added transmission laser technology (1310 and 1550 nm FP and 1550 nm DFB devices) to Opto Speed s existing products. The company manufactures mesa pin photodetectors with high speeds (up to 40 GHz) and low operating voltage (1 V). The single-chip devices can be top or bottom illuminated and have high reliability; 1 4 or 1 12 arrays are also available. The company s semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are InP/InGaAs devices with a ridge waveguide structure and tilted facets for low ripple (< 1 dB). They feature > 30 dB gain and > 7 dBm output power. Opto Speed also makes a range of superluminescent diodes (SLEDs) for broadcast communications in the 1280 1650 nm range. The devices have an output power of up to 25 mW in singlemode fiber, a wide optical bandwidth of 190 nm and a modulation rate of 1.25 Gbit/s. Another product, introduced in 1999, is an InP HBT preamplifier monolithically integrated with an InGaAs pin photodiode; a more recent variant now operates at 40 Gbit/s.
