Just in case anyone here does not fully appreciate how the POET tech will fundamentally change several industries in the next little while - here is a summary of announced developments over the last year or so. It is a long read but I will summarize it in 3 words - 'Buy and Hold'.
SHELTON, CONNECTICUT--(Marketwire - Jan. 19, 2010) - ODIS, Inc., announced today that it recently received a $750,000 Award to develop "Monolithic Infra-Red Pixel Structures Enabled by Thyristor-HFET EO Logic". Infra-Red technologies currently require cryogenic cooling to operate and use independent readout integrated circuits. The ODIS technology has been developed to provide the new "state of the art" in integrated approaches to infrared imaging combined with transistor readout circuits.
Dr. Geoff Taylor, Chief Scientist, ODIS, Inc., states that by incorporating these technologies on the same epitaxial structure, the electro-optic operation should enable high sensitivity infra-red imaging in an uncooled environment with significantly improved operating speeds and off-chip communications.
"This breakthrough technology not only has the potential to produce tremendous cost savings for the U.S. Air Force and Space Missile Command," said Leon (Lee) Pierhal, President, ODIS, Inc. "We expect enhanced reliability and higher resolution for current and future satellite missions. In addition, the technology should be able to reduce the cost and improve performance for several commercial markets which become viable with this new capability".
SHELTON, CONNECTICUT--(Marketwire - April 22, 2010) - Following closely to the previous $750,000 Award in January 2010, ODIS Inc. announced today that it has received two additional AFRL Awards for $850,000, totaling $1.6M so far this year.
The first is a $100,000 Award to develop an "Ultra Low Power RAM", a novel memory cell using the ODIS's optoelectronic thyristor within its III-V Planar OptoElectric Technology ("POET"). Very high density and low storage power may be achieved with the cell represented as the cross-point of an array. The memory design will enable it to be fully compatible with integrated optoelectronic CHFET/thyristor logic and optical I/O. Fabricated in radiation hard gallium arsenide ("GaAs"), the structure enables both static and dynamic operation.
ODIS also announced the receipt of a $750,000 Award to develop "Optoelectronic Directional Couplers for Switching Fabric", switching fabric on a single chip is a device technology that is required to enable the coordination and routing of multiple optical input signals to arbitrary multiple output ports without optoelectronic conversation which is essential technology for optical communication switching hubs and routers. Targeted for future military satellite missions, just like the Phase I, it will greatly reduce power requirements and be designed radiation hard.
SHELTON, CONNECTICUT--(Marketwire - Sept. 9, 2010) - ODIS Inc. announced today that it has received a development contract with the Navy Air Warfare Center that will involve a Phase I Award of $150,000. After a period of research conducted by the Navy of ODIS and other competing technologies, the Navy has followed other military branches and chosen ODIS's POET platform as a preferred candidate to develop optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) technology for future avionics systems.
CDMA is widely used in the wireless industry for secure channel allocation to a broad user base. OCDMA has similar potential for the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) application based upon a reduced cost of the optoelectronic interface circuits. ODIS has been awarded a Phase I contract with NAVAIR to develop OCDMA integrated OE circuit approaches for Navy Avionics platforms. The high level of security offered by OCDMA will be deployed at multiple levels in the Department of Defense (DOD) optical avionics multi-core processor networks. The security levels are obtained with the robust encryption techniques afforded by Pseudo-random Noise sequencing in both the time and wavelength domains.
SHELTON, CONNECTICUT--(Marketwire - Jan. 19, 2011) - ODIS Inc. announced today that it has received a development contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ("NASA") that will involve a Phase I Award of $100,000. After a period of growing recognition and awards from other United States military branches, NASA has followed the Navy and the Air Force and chosen ODIS's POET platform as a preferred method to develop Optoelectronic infrastructure for RF/Optical phased arrays.
Next generation sensors in space require both optical sensing at 1.5µm and mmw sensing at 35GHz. Normally, separate emitting apertures are required for the optical and RF functions. ODIS will develop the Planar OptoElectronic Technology ("POET") to combine the RF and optical transmit beams for phased array sensors into a single monolithic circuit, with each circuit providing a pixel of the RF array. POET will also enable on-chip electronic control of both RF and optical beam steering angles. With the large number of such spacecraft sensors deployed in extended missions, a huge advantage is gained by the elimination of weight and power along with improvement in reliability.
SHELTON, CONNECTICUT--(Marketwire - March 2, 2011) - OPEL Solar International Inc. ("OPEL" or "the Company") (TSX VENTURE:OPL) announced today that it is in receipt of a third party valuation of intellectual property developed by its U.S. affiliates OPEL, Inc. and ODIS Inc. The Planar Opto Electronic Technology ("POET"), initially developed by Dr. Geoffrey Taylor at the University of Connecticut and licensed to OPEL, Inc., is a semiconductor fabrication technology that enables the dense packing of digital, analog, and optical circuits on a single gallium arsenide chip. The technology now makes it possible to monolithically integrate a wide number of electronic and optoelectronic functions in a single chip with higher speeds and reduced power consumption compared to Silicon CMOS. For the same functionality, the chip size would be considerably reduced to approximately the size of half a person's thumb nail.
OPEL commissioned a valuation analysis of the POET Technology portfolio ("POET Technology") by an independent, third party valuation firm, Pellegrino & Associates, LLC. The Pellegrino firm performed an analysis of the uses of the POET Technology, the sales it could achieve in its targeted end-markets and likely margins if OPEL can complete its research and development activities successfully and the market adopts the POET Technology. Using a number of valuation techniques and based on technical information provided to it by the Company, the valuation firm has estimated that the POET Technology portfolio could be worth as much as approximately $1 billion. This worth is derived from a range of values; the median value being $966.6 million, while the mean valuation was reported at $1.31 billion.
SHELTON, CONNECTICUT--(Marketwire - April 20, 2011) - OPEL Solar International Inc. ("OPEL" or "the Company") (TSX VENTURE:OPL) announced today that its U.S. affiliate company, OPEL Defense Integrated Systems ("ODIS") has demonstrated laser operation for the first time in a new integrated device as part of its Planar Optoelectronic Technology ("POET") process.
POET creates high-performance devices by fusing light and electronics together on a single chip. Specifically, POET is a semiconductor-manufacturing technology that enables the monolithic fabrication of integrated circuit ("IC") chips containing both electronic and optical elements. By offering components with dramatically lowered cost, together with increased speed, density, and reliability, POET could potentially allow ODIS to fundamentally alter the landscape for a broad range of applications, such as tablet computers and smartphones.
Based on a proprietary Group III-V materials structure, the pulsed vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) operates at 980nm with a 12µm diameter vertical cavity surface and an output power of 1.7mW. In tandem with ODIS' previously-announced integrated detector - a heterostructure field effect transistor (HFET) device - the laser enables inter-circuit optical connections between electronic devices for on-chip applications.
"This has proven, for the first time, an end-to-end technology for on-chip integration of photonic circuits can manipulate light signals on the same semiconductor framework as electronic signals," noted Leon M. Pierhal, CEO of OPEL. "This technology has the potential to overcome the constraints of copper interconnects in silicon-based chips, and it further validates the years of development invested in ODIS, as reflected in the potential market applications for POET technology, as well as its overall importance to our stakeholders."
