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The silicon photonics aims to develop the technology of this chemical element to optimize the transformation of electrical signals into light pulses. The most obvious field of application of this innovation is the implementation of high performance links which, on paper, can be used both to resolve communications between several chips and to optimize the transfer of information between several machines.
The advanced packaging technologies used by leading semiconductor manufacturers, such as TSMC, Intel or Samsung, can greatly benefit from a very high-performance inter-chip communication mechanism. And large data centers where it is necessary to connect a large number of machines, too. However, there is one discipline in particular that has an overwhelming future projection and that would do wonders to build on the advantages offered by silicon photonics: artificial intelligence.
All this sounds very good, but there is something that we should not overlook: this innovation poses several very important technological challenges that must be solved so that its practical applications are possible. In this article we do not need to delve into them, but here is a clue for those who are not easily intimidated by the quantum physics and want to flirt a little more with silicon photonics: until very recently, quantum cascade lasers with silicon-based materials had not been made viable, but for several years there have been many powerful research groups working in this area. And many companies.
China claims to have reached decisive milestone in silicon photonics
Douglas Yu, an executive at TSMC with responsibility in the field of systems integration, clearly explains the disruptive capacity of this technology in this statement: “If we manage to implement a good integration system for silicon photonics, we will unleash a new paradigm. We will probably be at the beginning of a new era.” This reflection by Yu describes in a very forceful way how important this technology presumably is.
Chinese scientists have replaced lithium niobate with another semiconductor material whose properties are even more attractive: lithium tantalate (LiTaO3).
Intel and TSMC are some of the companies that have been working for several years on the development of their technologies linked to silicon photonics, and, as we can guess, this innovation is not foreign to companies and Chinese research centers. In fact, in mid-May, the Shanghai Institute of Information Technology and Microsystems (China) in collaboration with the Lausanne Institute of Technology (Switzerland) reached a crucial milestone. Until then, one of the fundamental ingredients of photonic integrated circuits was lithium niobate.
This synthetic salt is involved in the manufacturing of these integrated circuits because its physicochemical properties allow it to optimize the conversion of electricity into light, but it has a problem: the industrial exploitation of this technology is conditioned by the high cost of each wafer, and also by the size of each of them. What these scientists have achieved is to replace lithium niobate with another semiconductor material whose properties are even more attractive: lithium tantalate (LiTaO3).
Ou Xin, one of the scientists who led this project, assures In addition to performing better than lithium niobate, lithium tantalate allows the manufacturing of photonic integrated circuits on a large scale and at much lower costs. This is because manufacturing processes are similar to those currently used to produce conventional silicon semiconductors.
However, this is not all. And the JFS laboratory in Wuhan, which is one of the most important research centers in China, just managed to integrate a laser light source on a silicon chip. It is the first time that this milestone has been reached in China, which, added to the advances we have just investigated, presumably places this country on the verge of large-scale production of photonic chips.
More information | SCMP
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