Lightwave Logic and Polariton partner on electro-optic materials
By combining plasmonics and electro-optic polymers, the companies aim to eliminate limitations of legacy materials used for high-speed modulators, accelerating the introduction of 400G per lane and beyond for AI and datacentre optical links
Lightwave Logic, a technology platform company leveraging its proprietary electro-optic (EO) polymers to transmit data at higher speeds with lower power consumption, has announced the advancement of its technical collaboration with Polariton Technologies, a company developing high-speed EO components for the communication market.
The companies plan to jointly develop technical solutions to enable the faster adoption and integration of combined plasmonics and polymer-based products with semiconductor fabrication plants, outsourced assembly, and test operations. In addition to the goal of manufacturing transmitter PICs with inherent superior electro-optic performance, both teams will be working together on an extensive qualification and reliability programme, high-speed RF and optical testing, and back-end manufacturing process integration.
“Today's announcement marks an important step forward in our partnership with Polariton,” said Yves LeMaitre, CEO of Lightwave Logic. “We are transitioning from being a material supplier to collaborating on market development through end-user engagement and technical cooperation. We are excited to supply our EO polymer materials and integration expertise enabling Polariton to develop a revolutionary approach addressing the opportunities presented by AI market.”
Wolfgang Heni, co-founder and co-CTO of Polariton, added: “The combination of our technologies creates a truly unique and differentiated technology platform addressing the size and performance demands of next-gen AI clusters and datacentres. By combining plasmonics and EO polymers on silicon, we unlock the roadmap to modulator frequencies of 800 GHz in the future. We believe that using advanced materials in innovative ways is the key for silicon photonics to meet industry needs until 2030 and beyond.”
According to the companies, the collaboration allows for the device integration of Lightwave Logic's high-performance electro-optic polymer materials with Polariton's plasmonic circuits to address the inherent bandwidth and form factor bottlenecks of traditional materials such as indium phosphide, silicon photonics, and thin-film lithium niobate to accommodate ultra-high bandwidths. The collaboration is focused on applications for next-generation AI clusters, intra- and inter-datacentre and optical networking links to deliver 400G per lane and scale to 800G per lane. The ability to modulate the optical signal at 400G and beyond is critical to achieve bandwidth of 3.2T and 6.4T in the future.
Polariton has developed O-band products using Lightwave Logic's electro-optic polymer that are available for sampling with select customers.
