POET Taps Into Lithium Niobate and a Projected $37.7 Billion Market

POET Technologies’ announced partnership with Liobate Technologies marks the company’s foray into working with a new and promising material. POET’s proprietary Optical Interposer platform now has a chance to play a role in the growth of the lithium niobate industry, which is projected to expand to $37.711 billion by 2026, representing a CAGR of 24% from 2019, according to a report from Research Dive.

The importance of lithium niobate (LN) can’t be understated. It is a reliable and low-cost substance but for years its use has been limited because of its bulkiness and lack of power efficiency. That has changed thanks to advancements with thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), which, as the POET news release on February 24 stated, is “known for its inherent high bandwidth, low insertion loss, nonlinear optical qualities and extreme reliability.” TFLN is enabling new applications that dovetail with POET’s own development and business roadmap, including in millimeter wave data communications, telecommunications, sensing, and quantum computing.

A versatile material, TFLN can be grown on sapphire and other substrates, using the metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) process. Called lithium niobate-on-insulator (LNOI), the technology has gained attention from photonics industry experts because of the advantages it holds for reducing costs and increasing reliability for component and device manufacturers.

“Lithium niobate modulators have been used for the last 35 years, and have the best performance and reliability of any other modulator technology,” says POET Technologies President and General Manager Vivek Rajgarhia. “However, traditional LN modulators have suffered from their large size, which makes them less attractive and unusable for smaller, high-density applications — especially for cloud data centers. Liobate has solved this issue by miniaturizing the LN modulator and providing the ability for high-density integration, while increasing the performance with low insertion loss and maintaining the proven reliability and track record of LN modulators.”

Among the companies that have made notable steps with lithium niobate is Nanjing-based Liobate Technologies. The company’s website says, “Our core team has made significant breakthroughs in LNOI modulator chip technology. We have built a complete process platform and mass production line covering chip design, fabrication, and device packaging. We have multiple invention patents and leading technologies in the field.”

Liobate Technologies specializes in developing lithium niobate modulator photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and related optical communications and interconnect sub-assemblies. The company has an 1,810 square-meter facility that houses R&D, device pilot testing, and component packaging divisions. Liobate focuses on the design, fabrication, and sales of PICs and optical modules based on lithium niobate modulators. Its stated aim is to create “faster and more energy-efficient physical transmission channels.”

POET’s partnership with Liobate is a multi-phase, co-development project focused initially on a TFLN modulator to be incorporated directly onto a POET Optical Interposer for a POET 400/800Gps Transmit and Receive Optical Engine. It will be designed to address needs in POET’s target industries.

As the Research Dive study noted, there are two key areas where the optical industry can apply lithium niobate solutions:

1. 5G Technology: “Persistent technological advancements in the communication sector and implementation of 5G technology in the near future are expected to create tremendous opportunities for the growth of the market during the forecast period.”
2. IT & Telecom: “Increasing adoption of lithium niobate-based optical fiber modulators for enhanced mobile network services is expected to propel the growth of the sub-segment during the forecast period.”

With POET engaged in those verticals, the opportunity to integrate with Liobate converges with the market needs at a critical time of early adoption.