200 Gbps heterogeneous polymer/silicon photonic modulator presented
Lightwave Logic has announced that Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Michael Lebby discussed the latest world-class results for the company’s 200 Gbps heterogeneous polymer/silicon photonic modulator at a record low drive voltage at the 2024 Optical Fiber Conference (OFC) in San Diego, California.
The latest results for 200 Gbps heterogeneous polymer/silicon photonic modulator were shown in a presentation on March 24, 2024 during an industry workshop entitled “Will Heterogeneous Integration Meet the Needs of Future Applications?”, featuring co-panelists and speakers from six other companies. The panel focused on opportunities for heterogeneous integration of various materials including polymers and silicon — providing a roadmap for very high-performance optical polymer modulators that can operate with very low power consumption (via low voltage) and are very small in size — making them suitable for pluggable optical transceivers as well as on-board optics.
In the presentation, Dr. Lebby discussed the company’s latest world-class results based on a novel packaged heterogeneous polymer EO modulator design leveraging silicon photonics devices from a 200mm production foundry process and Lightwave Logic’s proprietary high temperature, high performance EO Polymer material. Each modulator was operated at 100 GBaud PAM4 and achieved all drive voltages below 2-V, and as low as 1-V which is excellent for low power operation. Dr. Lebby discussed the test set-up for the high-speed results, and how electro-optic polymer-based modulators based on 200mm silicon foundry wafers are ideal for 4 channel 200 Gbps per lane 800 Gbps pluggable optical transceivers for datacenter applications. He also shared updated lifetime and reliability data for both the electro-optic polymer materials and electro-optic polymer devices.
By leveraging the mature semiconductor ecosystem, silicon photonics has historically afforded unparalleled cost reduction and a deep level of integration, though due to fundamental physics limitations, silicon photonics are reaching the performance limit to reach the bandwidth and power requirements necessary in the modern era. This announcement demonstrates that a hybrid approach, leveraging the cost and integration benefits of silicon photonics along with the unparalleled bandwidth and low power advantages of Lightwave Logic’s proprietary EO polymers, lays a clear path for competitive performance and integration for current and future optical pluggable transceivers.
Dr. Michael Lebby commented: “Our newly presented results are incredibly exciting, representing not only the best commercial-grade-compatible polymer modulators to-date, but on commercial 200mm silicon wafers, with performances that fit very well for a 4-channel x 200 Gbps (or 800 Gbps) pluggable transceiver, as well as the next generation 4-channel x 400 Gbps (or 1600 Gbps) pluggable transceivers. 200G lanes with clean, open eye diagrams now represent an inflection-point to extend silicon photonics benefits by utilizing the company’s polymers to enable much higher data-rate speeds at significantly lower power consumption levels. These results will position Lightwave Logic to support the burgeoning demand of generative AI as datacenters around the world begin to upgrade their hardware faster than expected to meet the demands of the future.”
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