III-V Materials

Technology Work Group

Chairs

Richard Clayton, Clayton & Associates
Thomas Dudley, Pelorus Strategies

Participants: MIT and Industry Consortium Member Companies

Participants: Other Companies

Summary

The photonic component industry's focus and investment over the last decade has been on the InP material system, due to its ubiquity in both high performance datacom and longer reach telecom applications. Customer requirements for reduced footprint, power dissipation, and component cost, as well as opportunities for improvements in performance, reliability, and simpler device management, have driven a migration from discrete to hybrid solutions—and now to increasing levels of monolithic integration.

InP is the ideal material system for photonic integration of both passive and active optical functions and leverages significant industry experience in the design and high volume manufacture of high speed active optical devices. InP technology also has a proven record of monolithic integration of key elements such as the laser source and electroabsorptive modulator. Currently, 100 Gb/s DWDM transmitters on a monolithic substrate within a telecom-quality package are deployed in telecommunications networks, demonstrating the commercial potential for photonic integrated circuits.

Ultimately, the success of III-V integration efforts will rest with finding a high volume market driver. While metro and long haul telecom have been the drivers for InP device development and integration efforts to date, economies of scale will likely be achieved only through growth in other markets. FTTx transceivers and higher end transceivers for the networking markets offer some potential for volume, but the communications industry needs to be prepared to take advantage of advancements in storage and computing infrastructure technologies and free space optical links in next generation IrDA applications as possible cross-over markets to drive down cost. Additionally, as long as there is the potential for achieving acceptable performance, non-InP based III-V material systems used in some non-telecom applications should not be dismissed for cross-over possibilities into communications markets.