AOI gains funds for 1550nm VCSELs Applied Optoelectronics Inc (AOI), a company that manufactures mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers, has raised $10 million in a second round of funding and introduced its first VCSEL products, which operate at 1550 nm. This places AOI among the few companies, including Bandwidth9 and Nortel s CoreTek division, which are commercializing devices at this wavelength. AOI s new single-mode VCSELs are based on an external cavity laser design, and target metro applications. According to the company, a planned expansion of its development activities and production capacity, primarily for packaging and testing, will help to meet demand for these devices, which it began shipping in prototype quantities last November. AOI received $7 million in first-round funding last year, and operates a vertically integrated 24 000 sq. ft manufacturing facility in Sugar Land, Texas (see Compound Semiconductor Dec 2000/Jan 2001, p23). "This is a tremendous vote of confidence in Applied Optoelectronics and our VCSEL technology from our investors," said Thompson Lin, president and CEO. "With this infusion of capital, we will be able to accelerate the development and manufacture of new long-wavelength laser products. By leveraging our extensive experience in MBE growth of semiconductor laser structures, we have created a product that is squarely targeted at the metropolitan area network with link distances of 80 km or less." VCSEL developments According to AOI s director of marketing, Stefan Murry, the company is developing several different 1550 nm VCSEL designs. The device currently being shipped is an optically-pumped external cavity VCSEL. The company manufactures the VCSEL structure and obtains the external cavity components from an outside source. Featuring a tuning range of 2530 nm, the VCSEL achieves an output power of 6 mW in CW mode. "We also plan to introduce a range of electrically-pumped monolithic 1550 nm devices with 1 mW output sometime towards the middle of next year," says Murry. "These will be 2.5 Gbit/s emitters, and will include single VCSEL devices, and tunable VCSELs." The new monolithic VCSELs will employ InP substrates and contain InGaAsP active regions grown using the company s MBE systems. "We are addressing two major areas that have been preventing the proliferation of VCSELs at longer wavelengths," says Murry. "For the monolithically-grown DBR mirror stacks, we have improved the reflectivity of the layers, which has enabled us to reduce the total thickness of these stacks. This allows more heat to be removed from the active region, which is an important factor at longer wavelengths due to temperature-dependent losses such as Auger recombination. We have also optimized the active region by employing materials with improved gain properties compared to existing systems. The result is higher gain and lower loss, which increases the VCSEL output power." Agere Systems files lawsuits against component rival Multiplex Agere Systems has filed two lawsuits against Multiplex, a rival manufacturer of fiber-optic components. The first was filed in the US District Court for Delaware and alleges that Multiplex infringed four patents related to optical components and subsystems, including lasers and multiple quantum well modulators. According to Agere, the infringements relate to technology for pump lasers and for emitters used in short- and long-haul applications. Also included is technology designed to improve laser performance by reducing current leakage, and a method of improving waveguide structures. The second lawsuit, for property theft, was filed at the Superior Court of New Jersey Chancery Division and alleges Multiplex has wrongfully possessed Agere optoelectronic device wafers and other related proprietary property. Agere is seeking monetary damages for Multiplex s infringement of its patents, and recovery of its property, in addition to an injunction against further infringements. Multiplex has close links with Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies which is also the parent company of Agere. Multiplex s CEO and president, Won Tsang, is the former head of the Semiconductor Photonics Department at Bell Labs. Tsang founded Multiplex in early 1998 together with several of his Bell Labs colleagues, including Tawee Tanbun-Ek, now VP of materials technology at Multiplex. According to the Multiplex Web site, Tanbun-Ek was "mainly responsible for the development of Lucent s major laser products, such as the 1550 nm directly modulated 2.5 Gbit/s laser and the 2.5 Gbit/s electro-absorption modulated laser." David Tzeng, VP of technology and manufacturing for photoreceivers, is also a former senior Bell Labs employee. Agere launches transceiver range Agere has upgraded its product line to include a new set of plug-in transceivers, 10 Gbit/s PIN receivers, and 2.5 Gbit/s receivers (see ). Its NetLight 2417 transceiver range is now able to accommodate a temperature span of 40 to +85C, making them suited for non-controlled telecom carrier environments, in addition to datacom applications. The R192P is the company s new 10 Gbit/s PIN receiver that forms part of a small-form-factor MSA with companies such as JDS Uniphase, Toshiba and Fujitsu. Finally, the 2.5 Gbit/s P172 APD detector also operates from 40 to +85C. OpNext closes $321 million investment OpNext Inc, a supplier of active fiber-optic components and modules based in Eatontown, New Jersey, has received an investment worth $321 million from Clarity Group, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, and Marubeni Group, a trading house based in Japan. OpNext was formed from Hitachi s Fiber Optic Components business unit (see Compound Semiconductor Sept/Oct 2000, p43). The company says it will use the capital to expand manufacturing capacity, establish a worldwide sales and marketing team, grow its R&D program and develop new products. OpNext manufactures a range of components, including 2.5 and 10 Gbit/s laser diode modules, transmitters and receivers, and is also collaborating with TRW s new telecommunication components company, Velocium, to develop 40 Gbit/s transceivers. "Hitachi s heritage as a leader in semiconductors, optical lasers and transceivers, combined with a proven history of reliability and customer satisfaction, provides a tremendous base upon which OpNext will build its components and modules business," said OpNext chairman Masaaki Hayashi. VSK moves into InP production facilities VSK Photonics, a startup manufacturer of InP active optical components based in Lake Forest, CA, has moved into a new 21 000 sq. ft production facility. The company will produce InP-based photodetectors, modulators and lasers for transceivers and modules in 10 Gbit/s and next-generation 40 Gbit/s systems. Founded December 2000, VSK received $6 million in financing from Lighthouse Capital Partners to equip the new plant, which follows an $18 million investment earlier this year from Intel and Morgenthaler Ventures (see Compound Semiconductor May 2001, p15). "From our beginnings as a startup with exciting technology, we have now reached the next stage of corporate maturity," said Don Ackley, president and CEO. "We are increasingly well-positioned to become an integral part of the communications industry s next growth phase." Emcore unveils new 15Gbit/s parallel optical interconnect VCSEL device and array manufacturer Emcore has announced the production of 850 nm parallel optical array transmitter/receiver modules targeting high-speed data links, 10 Gbit/s VSR optical links used in optical interconnects, and datacom and telecom routers (see ). The new transponder modules provide a data rate of 1.25 Gbit/s over 12 channels of multi-mode fiber ribbon cable to give an aggregate bandwidth of 15 Gbit/s. The power consumption is typically 2 W for the transmitter/receiver pair. "In providing the market with a replacement for expensive serial interconnects, we have endeavored to ensure maximum manufacturing flexibility for our datacom and telecom customers," said Robert Bryan, VP of the company s Fiber Optics division. "The use of a ball grid array in Emcore s new product will ensure significantly easier manufacturing. Each module connects to external electrical circuitry using a compact BGA pattern on its underside, and therefore is one of the first optics that does not require special handling for insertion onto circuit boards. One of the many applications for these optics is to construct VSR transponders, which offer datacom and telecom equipment manufacturers significant cost and functionality advantages." Agility integrates modulators and amplifiers with its tunable lasers Tunable laser manufacturer Agility Communications has successfully integrated an electroabsorption modulator into its widely-tunable sampled-grating (SG) DBR laser, which targets 2.5 and 10 Gbit/s metro core applications. Agility employs a monolithic InP device architecture to integrate functions such as modulation and optical amplification onto a single chip (see Compound Semiconductor November 2000, p34). A beta customer base of 30 companies includes startups such as Atoga, Network Photonics, and Mahi, which are currently sampling Agility s 4 mW C-band (15251565 nm) tunable laser. "The significance of the electroabsorption modulated laser technology is that we re able to integrate both the amplifier and modulator and still get the same yields we ve achieved with our other lasers," explained Ron Nelson, Agility s president and CEO. "By integrating many capabilities onto one chip, we lower the overall capital and operating expenditures for carriers," he said. In Agility s device, a semiconductor optical amplifier and modulator are integrated after the front mirror of the SG-DBR laser. The company says the inclusion of an optical amplifier compensates for a trade-off in power that occurs when designing with a wide tuning range cavity design, which in Agility s case includes 91 ITU channels spaced at 50 GHz with a side mode suppression ratio of 40 dB. The device offers over 18 mW of power across the C-band with less than 1.5 dB variation in power, and is housed in a 2 3 0.5 inch package. Intense Photonics wins grant for optical switch Intense Photonics (Glasgow, Scotland) has been awarded a $630 000 grant from the Scottish Executive to develop an optoelectronic packet switch. The device will integrate all of the components required for the routing of information packets on one monolithic chip. Intense sees this as the foundation for a new generation of optical network peripherals that will deliver very high bandwidth as and when organizations require it. The project, expected to last 18 months, will use Intense Photonics quantum well intermixing technology to monolithically integrate all the required devices onto one chip (see p63 for more details). These include lasers drivers and modulators, photodetectors, waveguides, multiplexers and demultiplexers. The resulting device will be one of the most highly integrated optical components ever made. "This is an ambitious project which will enable the world s telecommunications equipment makers to start building all-optical communication systems for mass markets," said Jim Ashe, VP of sales and marketing. Alcatel sets new 40Gbit/s world record Alcatel has claimed a new world record in long-haul DWDM transmission by transmitting 32 channels at 40 Gbit/s over a distance of 2400 km in a laboratory demonstration. The 1.28 Tbit/s aggregate bandwidth was achieved using non-zero dispersion-shifted fiber and distributed Raman amplification. Raman amplifiers create less noise than EDFAs, a key feature for high-data-rate operation, and also allow for a significantly larger amplification bandwidth. Agilent and Corning set to accelerate deployment of parallel-optics Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) and Corning Cable Systems (Hickory, NC) are to provide a high-volume supply of new parallel-optics solutions, targeting high density interconnects for terabit switches and routers, server to server backplane interconnects and low-cost 10 Gbit/s SONET/SDH very short reach connections. Customers will gain access to Corning s passive optical technology and Agilent s active parallel-optics modules, which combine twelve 2.5 Gbit/s channels into discrete transmitter and receiver modules. These offer an aggregate data rate of 30 Gbit/s, and occupy only 1.5 inches of PC board. "Agilent Technologies is the leading provider of high-speed active parallel-optics networking components," added Stuart Hoiness, VP of OEM sales and marketing for Corning. "As the industry s leading provider of passive optical products, we have invested heavily in both multi-fiber assembly performance and capacity, to support the industry s rapid move toward parallel networking. This alliance reassures customers of the availability of all the necessary active and passive products." Nanovation fights to stay alive Nanovation Technologies, which is developing photonic integrated circuits using a variety of material systems including InP, has filed a petition for bankruptcy protection in a US court. The filing, under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, gives the company 100 days to try to come up with a restructuring plan that will keep it alive. Nanovation, which has a 108 000 sq. ft manufacturing plant in Northville Township, Michigan, laid off two-thirds of its 169 employees at the end of July after its latest funding round fell through. Alcatel Optronics acquires Kymata Alcatel Optronics is to acquire privately-held Kymata (Livingston, Scotland), in a share exchange valued at $117 million. Kymata produces arrayed waveguide gratings for use in DWDM systems using silica on silicon technology. Alcatel Optronics is an established manufacturer of active components such as lasers, photodetectors and optical amplifiers. The acquisition is part of Alcatel Optronics strategy to strengthen its planar waveguide expertise and passive component product lines with the aim of further integrating active and passive optical components. "Kymata is a perfect match with Alcatel Optronics and will allow us to gain at least two years in time-to-market for planar products," said Jean-Christophe Giroux, CEO of Alcatel Optronics. "This acquisition is a crucial step in the implementation of our strategy of active/passive integration, which we consider to be key to the future. Kymata s high-end passive components complement our own high-end active component portfolio." AXT debuts 1550nm FP source lasers AXT (Fremont, CA) has introduced a range of 1550 nm edge-emitting Fabry Perot (FP) lasers operating at 2.5 Gbit/s for SONET transceivers used in metro and long-haul applications. Exhibiting a high-temperature power output of 10 mW at 85C and peak linear power of 20 mW, these devices offer threshold currents of 10 mA and slope efficiencies of up to 0.5 mW/mA. The new laser is currently being sampled, with volume quantities expected later in the third quarter. "We are very pleased with the performance of our new 1550 nm lasers," commented Morris Young, president and CEO. "In a very short period of time, we have developed a world-class product that has numerous uses in rapidly growing markets such as metro area networks. Our power output exceeds that of most other 1550 nm lasers currently available, and the efficiency is approximately 50% better than most. This will help our customers achieve more aggressive transceiver designs with fewer cooling requirements."