Superior breeding spawns the best technology, and the Centre for
Integrated Photonics (CIP) at Martlesham Heath has a classy
pedigree.
CIP’s scientists and technology came from BT’s
Photonics Research laboratory which was taken over by the US glass
company Corning at the height of the telecoms boom in 2000.
After investing £40m in the centre, Corning pulled out of
it in 2003, at the nadir of the telecoms collapse, having decided
to divest itself of all its non-US R&D facilities.
To the rescue came the East of England Development Agency
(EEDA). “EEDA agreed to give a grant to keep the equipment
running and to keep the scientists,” says Stephen Holton, CEO
of CIP, which currently employs 32 people. “Five of them are
world authorities in their areas,” adds Holton.
Helped by big R&D contracts from BT (£256,000), the
Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council (£1.24m), the
EU Framework VI programme €400,000) and backing from the DTI,
CIP was kept intact as a going concern. “We were free to
create our own business,” says Holton.
 |
|
| Stephen Holton standing between Neville
Reyner (left) and Neil Weston |
|
CIP does a fair bit of work for universities, not just R&D
work but producing devices on its own fully integrated, front end
and back end, III-V fab line. “We’re an open-style
laboratory in terms of support for business and higher
education,” says Holton.
An option CIP is considering is to act as a complete R&D
facility for companies wanting to outsource their photonics
research.
“The idea would be to take over the entire R&D
function of a company,” says Holton. “It would be in
complete confidence. The people here have been working in BT and
Corning and are used to restrictive information flows.”
As well as doing contract work, CIP has developed its own range
of standard products which should bring in revenues of around
£200,000 this year.
They fall into five categories: optical regenerators,
super-luminescent diodes (SLDs), semiconductor optical amplifiers
(SOAs), electro-absorption modulators (EAMs) and micro-fluidic,
laboratory-on-a-chip products.
The optical regenerators reshape and re-amplify the wave signal
coming down a fibre-optic cable. “They are 2R optical
regenerators - they reshape and re-amplify a signal and reposition
it where it’s meant to be,” says Neil Weston, vice
president of sales and marketing at CIP. “We could do a 3R
– reshape, re-amplify and re-time - we know how to do
it.”
Currently CIP is selling its optical regenerators into research
houses but they could go into the commercial telecoms network when
the infrastructure adopts 40Gbit/s technology
“40Gbit/s processing is going to be bloody
difficult,” says Weston. “A number of countries have
40G trials. China is one, Malaysia is another. The problem at 40G
is dispersion. Dispersion is 16 times worse at 40G than it is at
10G.”
CIP’s optical regenerators use another CIP standard
product line – SOAs. “SOAs are used in amplification
and switching,” explains Weston. “You put light in and
you get amplified light out.”
The devices can also act as an attenuator, and can switch on and
off very quickly, so can act as a switch for light. “They
have a recovery time of 18picoseconds and can switch at 40Gbit/s
and beyond. We’re focusing on switching,” adds
Weston.
A potential application for CIP’s SOAs is in an
all-optical switch. Theoretically they could make an optical
computer. “We have done optical NOR gates and optical AND
gates,” says Weston.
A key attribute for CIP’s optical components is that the
alignment tolerances are built into the components so they can be
very accurately aligned on PCBs. “There is no active
alignment – they’re like Lego – it’s the
key to high volume, low-cost optical systems,” says Weston.
CIP’s passive alignment technique reduces cost by 75 per cent
but the technique is not yet in pick and place machines. When
volume is required, it will be.
The EAM devices use a shutter to switch a laser.
“It’s a simple way of turning light on and off - we can
easily do 40Gbit/s,” says Weston. “We can make 32,000
on a 2in. wafer. The chip is as long as the diameter of the fibre -
100 microns. It’s packaging which is the expense.”
EAMs replace the standard way of modulating a laser using a
lithium niobate crystal but these are power hungry and bulky. EAMs
are 100 times smaller, and use ten times less power. They are more
expensive than lithium niobate devices at the moment - $2,000 for
an EAM compared to $1500 for lithium niobate – but EAMs could
reduce in cost with volume.
The nearest thing CIP has to a commodity product are SLDs.
“We sell them as a semi-custom chip-on-carrier for between
£50 and £200 – it’s a naked chip bonded onto
a substrate which the customer takes and packages,” says
Weston. The devices turn electricity into light and CIP’s
SLDs sell in volume in gyroscopes and tomography
applications.
The newest product line at CIP is microfluidics. They have
250µm wide channels made in silica through which a fluid can
be run. Chemical companies use the devices for high throughput
analysis.
The devices have the potential, because they are inexpensive to
make in volume, to provide consumer diagnostic kits, but for that
they would have to be made in polymer – something CIP is
working on.
CIP’s pedigree in photonics has bred a notable UK
capability. “Ours are the best performing devices on the
market,” says Holton.
www.ciphotonics.com