Lightwave Logic Inc (LWLG)

[Photonics_Guy]

Observations from ECOC Presentation

Slide 20: Very encouraging to see that LWLG has the potential to leapfrog the technical hurdles to address higher bitrates.

Slide 22: Checking a lot of very important boxes here.

Slide 28: Integrating polymers with InP and SiP allows LWLG to cherry pick applications that have high margin and potential for market penetration.

Slide 32: Theoretical (calculated) Insertion Loss (IL aka S21) and Optical Return Loss (ORL aka S11) of LWLG's polymer modulators. Great performance. For those who are curious:
- S21 is the gain (or loss) of the device as measured from input to output. A loss of 3dB results in only half the power from the input reaching the output. A loss of 6dB results in a quarter of the input power reaching the output.
- The S21 chart here appears to be in terms of RF loss which is 2X that of the optical loss. So 6dB RF loss equates to 3dB of optical loss which is very good.
- S11 is the amount of energy reflected (lost) from the input to the modulator back into the laser. If S11 is too high it can cause undue noise in the driving laser or introduce an effect called Rayleigh Scattering which increases the amount of noise in the path and reduces dynamic range. An ORL of 10dB means that 10% of the power is reflected back. An ORL of 20dB means that only 1% of the power is reflected back.

Slide 33: Very nice to see experimental results match those of the theoretical. Equipment limitations are a serious handicap for LWLG. They are pushing the limits of technology to a point where the tools are not keeping up with the tech.

Slide 34: Same comments as for Slide 33. Really impressed with the IL performance!

Slide 35 and 37: I am curious if there is potential to improve the Vpi performance of the modulator further. Shorter electrode length extends the bandwidth of the device at the cost of higher Vpi. 2.5mm electrodes would give much better bandwidth but doubles the Vpi from that of the 5mm electrode version. This is obviously an area of intense research by LWLG.

Slide 43: Very encouraging to see that devices appear to be compliant with GR-468 testing. Also very encouraging to see that the devices appear to be compliant with Telecom requirements in addition to Datacom. A engineer friend of mine that works for a prominent company in the GaAs/GaN space showed an earlier LWLG powerpoint to their acquisition folks. They opted to not contact LWLG for the perceived reason of thermal instability in polymers. Very good to see that LWLG is chipping away at this perception.