Vitesse uses 4-inch HBT process on Eblana lasers
Vitesse Semiconductor and Eblana Photonics have applied a standard HBT manufacturing process to fabricate laser chips on a 4-inch InP wafer line.
The two companies have also signed a manufacturing agreement, and Eblana is planning to start ordering materials and fabricating chips around the middle of this year.
Vitesse and Eblana believe that the low-cost process, which avoids the costly regrowth steps normally used in laser fabrication, demonstrates that optoelectronic chips can be made in very high volumes in a way that imitates silicon IC manufacture.
Eblana CEO James O'Gorman says that conventional laser fabrication is totally unsuited to very-high-volume manufacturing, and therefore only useful for niche applications such as the long-haul market. He claims that that his technology platform is suitable for access, metro and long-haul applications alike.
O Gorman believes that with the huge fiber-to-the-home build-out programs promised in Japan and South Korea, as well as smaller developments in progress in the US currently, there is a pressing need for a low-cost, high-volume laser manufacturing technology. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime infrastructure build-out," O'Gorman told compoundsemiconductor.net.
The performance of the lasers fabricated on Vitesse's 4-inch InP foundry line is said to be as good as distributed feedback (DFB) technology. The singlemode lasers emit at 1.54 micron, with a threshold current of 12 mA. Side-mode suppression ratio is better than 40 dB with a 20 mW laser output.
Eblana's technology, developed by O-Gorman and others at Trinity College Dublin and the Irish National Microelectronics Research Center in Cork, uses "photon mode engineering" to control laser modes.
This means that after growing the laser's epitaxial layers, the wafer is structured to form photonic bandgaps that control the device output. Because there is no need to regrow semiconductor heterointerfaces, claims Eblana, the technology is inherently cheaper to manufacture and more reliable than its rivals .
"Since Eblana's technology only uses standard electronics design rules and mature processes, it achieves performance and product consistency typical of ICs, which to date has not been a feature of photonics products," said Ray Milano, VP of optical technologies at Vitesse.
Using Vitesse's standard VIP-2 InP HBT process will reduce the overall cost of transceiver manufacture by over 50% in volume applications, claims Eblana.
O'Gorman said that Eblana was in discussions with potential customers and had booked foundry time with Vitesse. He added that the company hoped to be ordering the necessary materials by the middle of this year.
Eblana, which was founded in late 2000, had raised a total of $7.75 million after it closed its Series B funding round in February 2003.
