Lightwave Logic Inc (LWLG)

[tkg]

POLYMER MATERIALS TWG

System aspects of active polymer PICs

As the trend towards increased data rates in fiber communications continues, there is also a need to reduce power consumption as well as decrease the physical size of the transceiver unit or box. This leaves a design criterion that is challenging both from a size, weight, power issue as well as a high speed, and more importantly cost considerations.
Polymers have the advantage of naturally high data rate capacity as seen by a number of publications of results that exceed 100 Gbps. Polymers also have the advantage of meeting the lower power consumption targets through driving high speed Mach-Zehnder modulators with voltage levels significantly below 5V, and in fact with Ridge Waveguide devices in the 1-3V range, and with slot devices in the 0.5-2V range.

It is well known that polymer materials typically use a spin-on process, and from a weight standpoint, achieve low weight criteria in data communications. The size of devices can vary, however, by integrating polymer modulators with other photonic devices, the size can be minimized effectively.

Last but not least in the key criteria metrics, polymers have scalability, both in high speed performance, and in lower cost structures needed for competitive pricing of transceivers. While many technologies are struggling today to surpass the 5-10$/Gbps mark (i.e. achieve lower $/Gbps numbers than 5$/Gbps), customers of for example datacenters have made it very clear in public forums over the past 2 years that what is required are transceivers that meet $1/Gbps. This metric is not meaningful unless a data rate is attached, and the metric of $1/Gbps at a 400Gbps data rate translates into a data link for a data center where the total transceiver cost must meet $400 ($200 each end of the link) and the data rate for the link must achieve at least 400Gbps. This is certainly a tough challenge, being 5-10X improvement over state of the art today. Clearly, innovation is needed to achieve these types of metrics, and polymers, when integrated into a PIC (photonic integrated circuit) platform have the scalability both to meet and exceed this challenge by the data center companies.

Polymer photonics will grow from up to 10 polymer devices per PIC presently, to over 500 devices per PIC over the next 20 years. The types of PICs that will implement polymers include transmitter that include both modulators, lasers, waveguides, WDMs, spot size converters, and detectors. The functions of these polymer PIC chips may include transmitter drivers, and arrayed transmitter drivers, both incoherent and coherent. Key applications for polymer based PICs include data communications and telecommunications. Within data communications, both datacenters, and high performance computing segments.

CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Lebby, Lightwave Logic Inc. - chair
Felix Betschon Vario-optics ag. - chair

https://photonicsmanufacturing.org/sites/default/files/documents/front-end_polymer_materials_3.pdf