The UK's Technology Strategy Board has invested £1.85m to develop InP photonic devices and active materials.
The three year project is part of the Board's collaborative research and development programme, and includes: CIP Technologies, Bookham Technology, SAFC Hitech, Loughborough Surface Analysis (LSA), and the Universities of Sheffield and Surrey.
Called ETOE II (Extended Temperature OptoElectronics), it is a continuation of ETOE I by the same partners.
The new project has two main thrusts: the development of reliable aluminium-containing active photonic devices and, longer term, to look at alternative active layer materials for InP and GaAs devices, including nitrogen, antimony and bismuth.
The first trust is "to support the high temperature operation of functions such as integrated semiconductor optical amplifiers and electro-absorption modulators, and widely-tuneable lasers with integrated Mach Zehnder modulators", said CIP Technologies.
Part of the ETOE II brief is to tackle power wastage by raising the operating temperature range of optoelectronic components - reducing or eliminating the need for cooling.
"What is not always appreciated is that for each watt of power consumed within a device on an equipment card, another two watts can be required to remove the heat it produces from the building," said CIP.
"This is particularly important for optoelectronic components such as lasers and amplifiers, because their operating temperature ranges need to be controlled with local thermoelectric cooling - wasting yet more power."
Consortium contributions include: metal-organic vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE) growth from novel precursors for the in-situ etching of aluminium-containing materials by SAFC Hitech; layer growth from Bookham, CIP and Sheffield; structural design and modelling from Bookham, CIP and Surrey; device fabrication at Bookham and CIP; and process characterisation by LSA, Sheffield and Surrey.