Here are the changes to the K that I noticed.
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Posted On: 03/16/2018 8:56:10 PM
Here are the changes to the K that I noticed.
Best to copy and paste in word, print it, 14 pages or so.
it used just read CMOS (inserted “Indium Phosphide (InP), Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), and other semiconductor”) Manufacturing. (Very Important)
Current legacy technology is based on inorganic crystalline materials, which has allowed for the proliferation of data over fiber optic cables. However, there are inherent molecular deficiencies that have prevented this technology from scaling down in price and up in functionality., especially in terms of $/Gbps. (Huge)
The polymer materials are then part of an integrated photonics platform that can house other photonic devices, such as lasers, waveguides etc.
In April 2017 we achieved bandwidth suitable for 25Gbps data rates in an all-organic polymer ridge waveguide intensity modulator prototype, a significant improvement over our initial 10Gbps device modulator prototype that was announced in 2016. This breakthrough was significant because a 25Gbps data rate is important to the optical networking industry because this data rate is a major node to achieve 100 Gbps (using 4 channels of 25 Gbps). In July 2017 we advanced our high-speed modulation performance to satisfy 28Gbps data rates for QSFP28 standards and 100Gbps data center applications.
In September 2017 we achieved outstanding performance of our ridge waveguide Mach-Zehnder modulators ahead of schedule, with bandwidth performance levels that will enable 50Gbps modulation in fiber-optic communications. This important achievement will allow users to utilize arrays of 4 x 50Gbps polymer modulators using PAM-4 encoding to access 400Gbps data rate systems. Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) is an encoding scheme that can double the amount of data that can be transmitted.
We are now optimizing our high-performance modulators against typical specifications that are required by the fiber communications industry. Furthermore, we are packaging our modulators with our packaging partner so that potential customers can evaluate our high-performance modulators in their systems. One of the most under-evaluated processes of developing high speed devices onto a new and novel technology platform is robustness and reliability. We have already made extensive progress with our polymer materials on this front, and now we are integrating our robust polymer materials onto an integrated photonics platform to provide customers with a more miniaturized, higher performance solution for their data rich systems.
We have also shown that with standard simulation and modeling of our devices, there is a potential to scale the high-speed performance beyond that of 50Gbps, thus providing a technology platform for even greater data rates in the future. This means that our technology platform using polymers is both scalable in high performance as well as scalable in miniaturization and low cost, something that the fiber communications industry has been searching for a long time.
Initially, we fabricated our ridge waveguide modulator to prove the viability of our materials and anticipated that the initial prototype alpha would target the specific OC-48 niche in the telecommunications market operating at 2.5 Gbps. However, our initial prototype demonstrated significantly better potential data rates, which lead us to believe that further refinements to the design could not only address the telecommunications market operating at 2.5 Gbps, but also address certain segments of both the data communications and cloud computing markets. Subsequently, further testing of our electro-optic polymer material conducted by a third-party testing equipment firm indicated that our material could operate at 25 Gbps or higher with further optimization.
A 25 Gbps data rate would allow us to squarely address the 100 Gbps modulator market (composed of transceiver designs that multiplex 4 signals at 25 Gbps together to reach 100 Gbps), which is not only experiencing the greatest market demand today, but is expected to maintain this demand as a key node in data communication performance levels. We believe that the smaller footprint of our ridge waveguide modulator (compared to currently installed inorganic-enabled legacy devices), along with lower potential drive voltage and other undisclosed features, will enable our Company to garner significant market share across the entire telecommunications, data communications and data center value chain.
On December 27, 2016 we announced that our first prototype alpha was 10 Gbps capable (four times faster than our initial anticipated rate), and had achieved 3dB bandwidths of up to 20GHz. These performance achievements not only confirmed that our ridge waveguide modulator is capable of 10 Gbps, but with fine-tuning device parameters, that it is capable of 25 Gbps in the very near future. The key to the performance increase at 10 Gbps was attention to utilizing our high performance organic polymers into a robust fabrication design as a ridge waveguide modulator
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For the past several decades, diverse corporate interests, including, to our knowledge, IBM, Lockheed Martin, DuPont, AT&T Bell Labs, Honeywell , ADDED (Motorola, HP), as well as others
attempted to produce high-performance…….
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We understand from initial conversations with data center (ADDED architects and designers) that the temperature specifications that our materials achieve are compliant with their equipment design needs.
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ADDED all new verbiage “polymer materials. Our intellectual property portfolio has expanded significantly over the last year as we are developing our P2IC™ into prototypes. We have filed more than 6 patents during 2017 and are currently in the process of readying a number of other inventions for formal filing later in 2018. We expect to continue innovating with our P2IC platform during 2018, and expect to at least maintain this level of invention at our Company during the whole of 2018. Our focus for 2018 is to establish the world’s first unique PerkinamineTM polymer based integrated photonics circuit portfolio of patents to support our working prototypes.
We have filed 2 patents in 2018, and we expect another patent to be filed by early March 2018. In total, our patent portfolio consists of 13 granted patents that include 4 from the US, 1 from Canada, 5 from the EU, 2 from Japan and 1 from China.
Our materials patent portfolio has also strengthened significantly in 2017 with the filing of additional new patent applications on our core PerkinamineTM molecular compounds as well as recent, innovative inventions that are expected to protect our P2IC polymer PIC platform from potential competition.
Included in our patent portfolio are the following nonlinear optic chromophore designs
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Corning chapter - We elected to exercise our termination rights under the agreement effective January 1, 2018.
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In April 2017 we achieved bandwidth suitable for 25Gbps data rates in an all-organic polymer ridge waveguide intensity modulator prototype, a significant improvement over our initial 10Gbps device modulator prototype. This breakthrough was significant because a 25Gbps data rate is important to the optical networking industry because this data rate is a major node to achieve 100 Gbps (using 4 channels of 25 Gbps). In July 2017 we advanced our high-speed modulation performance to satisfy 28Gbps data rates for QSFP28 standards and 100Gbps data center applications.
In September 2017 we achieved outstanding performance of our ridge waveguide Mach-Zehnder modulators ahead of schedule, with bandwidth performance levels that will enable 50Gbps modulation in fiber-optic communications. This important achievement will allow users to utilize arrays of 4 x 50Gbps polymer modulators using PAM-4 encoding to access 400Gbps data rate systems. Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) is an encoding scheme that can double the amount of data that can be transmitted.
In February As we move forward through 2017, we expect to (i) bring in-house more specific skill sets in materials engineering and in device testing and fabrication, as well as personnel to orchestrate our various Company activities; and (ii) attract an industry partner with the synergistic capabilities necessary to help develop future products that are in various stages of design, such as a slot waveguide modulator and our integrated fiber optic polymer-based transceiver.
The 2018 we began the transition of moving our Newark, Delaware synthetic laboratory and our Longmont, Colorado optical testing laboratory and corporate headquarters to our new office, laboratory and research and development space located at 369 Inverness Parkway, Suite 350, Englewood, Colorado. The new 13,420 square feet Englewood facility includes fully functional 1,000 square feet of class 1,000 cleanroom, 500 square feet of class 10,000 cleanroom, chemistry laboratories, and analytic laboratories. The new Englewood facility streamlines all of our Company’s research and development workflow for greater operational efficiencies. We expect to complete the transition of moving our Newark, Delaware synthetic laboratory and our Longmont, Colorado optical testing laboratory and corporate headquarters to the new Englewood facility by the end of March 2018.
As we move forward through 2018, we expect to continue building our world-class design team for both polymer materials and integrated photonics technology platform to further optimize our P2IC™ platform. With the now consolidated facility in Englewood, Colorado, we will complete our clean-room and laboratories so that we can keep key technologies and processes internal to the Company. We will package our modulators for customer evaluation, and will continue to design our polymers for improved data rates and lower power operation. We will engage with customers to fine tune our technology to meet customer expectations, and we will scale our technology to provide cost effective technological solutions for the fiber communications market segments. We will partner with other companies as necessary, e.g. our packaging partner in 2017/18 is allowing us to move quickly towards customer prototypes.
The Global Photonic Device Market
General Overview
Lightwave Logic has been reviewing the latest market data as well as its own internal data for its business strategy, and below we detail the global market dynamics both in terms of data traffic as well as how PIC based technologies will grow in the fiber communications segment of the market.
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As we have already seen with products such as smart phones, lap top computers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), Internet traffic is one of the important metrics that is being used to show activity in fiber communications, and particularly telecommunications as well as datacommunications (which includes datacenters and high-performance computing). Internet Protocol (IP) traffic has typically been used to gauge the amount of data that is being used on the internet as shown in the graph below (sourced from Cisco VNI in 2018). The metric is Exabytes per month. An Exabyte is 1E18 which is 1000 Petabytes, or 1000,000 Terabytes or a billion Gigabytes of data. As seen from the graph which has a strong growth of 22% CAGR (2015-2020), the majority of the traffic is being driven by video, traffic, and is fast approaching the metric of Zetta which is 1E21 bytes of data. Some estimates are discussing the further metric of Yotta which is 1E24 bytes of data over the next decade, which is also expected to be driven for the most part by video.
Within Photonic the overall market trends of IP traffic growth, the internet will need to be able to support high volumes of data traffic. In order to do this, the fiber-optic infrastructure that allows data to be communicated between network nodes such as datacenters, within datacenters, and optical network switches etc., has to be upgraded. Today, fiber-optic networks are a combination of long, medium and short optical interconnects that range from 3 meters (or 1yard) to over 1000km depending on application in the optical network. Optical components, typically known as photonics components are used to build the fiber-optic infrastructure and consist of things like: laser diode, photodetectors, multipliers, modulators, transceivers etc. These are known as discrete components, while a mix of these components that are integrated or connected on a single substrate (such as silicon, InP, GaAs etc.) are called PICs (Photonic Integrated Components). The summary photonics market has been reviewed in 2017 and is shown below. The summary photonics market is forecast to grow to $43B by 2025 with a 7% CAGR (20-25) that includes both discrete and PIC photonic components. The summary photonics components market is forecasted to reach $21B in 2017.
Within the summary photonics components market, three major segments exist: WAN (wide area networks), access, and Datacom. The WAN segment is forecast to grow to $27B by 2025 with a 19% CARG (20-25) and the Datacom segment is forecast to grow to $12.1B by 2025 with 22% CAGR (20-25). As can be seen from the graph below, the growth of the WAN and Datacom segments is forecasted to be very strong over the next decade and provide the engine for growth in the overall global photonics components market.
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One of the key metrics that is needed for any overall market analysis is how photonics components will grow over the next decade from a PIC perspective. This is important as the trend to integrate photonics components is beginning to accelerate. The trend has been driven by customer applications that require smaller photonic component solutions, lower power, high data rates, larger buildings for longer interconnect lengths, and more economic in terms of $/Gbps. PIC technologies, i.e. those technologies that include integrated photonics are forecasted to grow to ~$30B by 2025 with 16% CAGR (20-25). These technologies include InP which is the current incumbent, GaAs, and other newer integrated technology solutions such as SiP (silicon photonics), polymer photonics, and dielectric photonics. The forecast of ~$30B is approximately 69% of the summary photonics components market by 2025, which represents a huge acceleration for PIC based technologies over the next decade. This also means while PIC based technologies are $7B today with 24% of the photonics components market, PIC based technologies become de facto by 2025.
While the rise of PIC based technologies is exciting, what also is exciting in the photonics component market is the rise of fiber-optic transceivers. Transceivers are small boxes located at the end of each fiber-optic link that house photonics components and PIC components which send and receive data. While the global overall photonic components market is expected to reach $43B by 2025, the photonics transceivers sub-segment is forecasted to grow to $25B by this time. This represents that transceivers will accelerate to 58% of the global overall photonics market by 2025 and become a major driver for optical networking over the next decade.
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The key segments in photonics based fiber-optic transceivers achieved $11.3B in 2017 with growth from 9 different segments that include: AOC, CATV, Fibre Channel, DWDM, Ethernet-datacom, WAN-client side, Radio etc., based transceivers. Three of these segments are forecasted to grow very well to achieve revenues of $25B by 2025, with the biggest contributions from DWDM, Ethernet-datacom, and WAN-client based transceivers.
The transceiver growth shows which sub-segments that will utilize small boxes at the ends of fiber-optic interconnects, it is well known that transceiver trends over the past decade have been towards smaller boxes i.e. smaller transceiver formats and footprints (such as SFF, SFP, QSFP, and many others), with higher densities of photonics components designed into them. It is expected over the forecast period that transceivers will be an excellent platform for the accelerating trends of PICs in both telecom and datacom applications. The graph below shows the PIC transceiver forecast to 2025. PIC transceivers are forecast to reach $20B by 2025 with 17% CARG (20-25) growing from $3.2B in 2017. What is more interesting is that by about 2021, PIC transceivers will lead discrete photonic component transceivers from a revenue standpoint. This means that the trend to integrate photonics components inside a transceiver is accelerating quickly, driven by the customer interest for smaller, denser, and higher performance metrics of transceivers. This trend is ideal for our polymer based integrated photonics platform to have a huge impact in the market segment over the next decade.
Within the PIC transceivers market there are a number of sub-segments that summate to $20B by 2025. The major segments that drive this forecast are Ethernet, DWDM, and WAN-client-side applications as can be seen from the graph below. In particular these segments are technologically driven by PIC based technologies that operate at 100Gbps and 400Gbps data rates that generally are considered high performance solutions.
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Data rates and high performance of transceivers can be seen by the graph below which depicts PIC based technologies in the Ethernet sub-segment. For Ethernet applications only, transceivers are driven by 100GE based PIC technologies. The market is forecast with 100GE to grow to $4.5B by 2025 with 6% CAGR (20-25) and with 400GE to grow to $0.98B by 2025 with 16% CAGR (20-25). This is a clear drive for the PIC based transceivers in the Ethernet application is 100GE over the forecast period and sets the scene for polymer based integrated photonics to have the opportunity to grow extremely quickly.
As the Company is developing polymer based photonic devices such as fiber-optic modulators , these devices translate electric signals into optical signals allow laser based technology to operate effectively at 50Gbps and beyond. Lasers with modulator are used in fiber communication systems to transfer data over fiber-optic networks. today and are expected to be a key driver in photonics components for PIC based technological solutions over the next decade. Optical data transfer using lasers and modulators is significantly faster and more efficient than transfer technologies using only electric signals, permitting more cost-effective use of bandwidth for broadband Internet and voice services.
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The overall square footage in datacenters has been growing rapidly over the past 5 years, and is expected to continue this trend over the next decade.
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Links that are shorter than 500 meters “and operate at approximately 10Gbps” can employ “direct modulation,” which accomplishes modulation by mechanically turning a laser on and off. However, for links greater than 500 meters “and higher data rates such as 25Gbps, 40Gbps, and beyond”, it is necessary to employ optical modulators. We intend to target optical devices that are aimed at the 500m to 10km distance segment of the market. “that operate at 25Gbps and higher data rates”. These are single mode fiber links and require polymer optical devices that operate in single optical mode. While some data center customers are planning their architectures using single mode fiber links even below 500m, others are focusing on cost-performance to make their decisions for their particular architectures. Our technology is both single mode and scalable “in both increased data rates and low cost”, which means that it can be implemented in either data center application depending on how we achieve the customer metrics and specifications. We believe that our single mode modulator solutions will not only be competitive at 500m to 10km link distances “at 25Gbps data rates and beyond”, but also at distances below 500m “at 25Gbps and beyond” depending on the customer architecture designs.
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All added
Industry issues of scaling
The key issues facing the fiber-optic communications industry are the economic progress and scalability of any PIC based technological platform. The polymer platform is unique in that it is truly scalable. Scalable means being able to scale up for high speed data rates, while simultaneously being able to scale down in cost. This allows a competitive cost per data rate or cost per Gbps metric to be achieved.
Fiber optic datacentre and high-performance computing customers want to achieve the metric of $1/Gbps @ 400Gbps (this essentially means a single mode fiber optic link that has a total cost of $400 and operates with a data rate of 400Gbps à which also means that each transceiver at each end of the fiber optic link must be able to be priced at $200), but as industry tries to match this target, it is already falling behind as can be seen in the Figure below which plots generic typical PIC based technology:
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In the above figures (where the left-hand graph is a linear vertical scale, and the right-hand graph is a log scale), it can be seen that the orange curve plots the customer expectation, while the other color curves show $/Gbps improvement over time for various high-speed data rate transceivers using PIC based technologies. A gap is appearing between what customer expect and what the technologists can produce.
Polymers play an important role in PICs over the next decade as they can reduce or close the gap between customer expectations and technical performance through effective scaling increase of high performance with low cost. This is shown in the Figure below how polymers have the potential to scale to the needs of the customers over the next 3-5years.
Some of the things needed to achieve the scaling performance of polymers in n integrated photonics platform is within sight today:
1)
Increased r33 (which leads to very low Vpi in modulator devices) and we are currently optimizing our polymers for this.
2)
Increase temperature stability so that the polymers can operate at broader temperature ranges effective, where we have made significant progress over the past few years.
3)
Low optical loss in waveguides and active/passive devices for improved optical budget metrics which is currently an ongoing development program at our Company
4)
Higher levels of hermeticity for lower cost packaging of optical sub-assemblies within a transceiver module, where our advanced designs are being implemented into polymer-based packages.
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Check it out Crossed out Continue to utilize outside consultants to gain technical expertise ALL NEW --? Recruit Technical Expertise
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Leonberger elected to our Board of Directors and serves as a member of the operations committee and assists with the technical direction and strategy of the company
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In September 2017 we announced that our initial alpha prototype ridge waveguide modulator, enabled by our P2IC™ polymer system, demonstrated bandwidth performance levels that will enable 50Gbps modulation in fiber-optic communications. This device demonstrated true amplitude (intensity) modulation in a Mach-Zehnder modulator structure incorporating our polymer waveguides.
This important achievement will allow users to utilize arrays of 4 x 50Gbps polymer modulators using PAM-4 encoding to access 400Gbps data rate systems. Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) is an encoding scheme that can double the amount of data that can be transmitted. These ridge waveguide modulators are currently being packaged with our partner and will be available for evaluation by potential customers in 2018. In parallel, we are simulating and modeling the modulators for scalability to higher data rates above 50Gbps and lower cost structures that will be competitive with incumbent technology. This provides our technology platform with higher levels of scalability and will provide potential customers with technological solutions that they are currently looking for.
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We continued with our collaborative development of our SOH/ Polymer photonic slot waveguide modulator in 2014 and continued our collaboration with an associated third -party research group in 2017 and expect to see initial results in 2018.
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Our Competition
Competitive Technologies - PIC Based Technologies
PIC technologies have historically been driven using III-V compound semiconductors, namely InP, although GaAs remains a strong PIC platform, and is expected to strengthen via the VCSEL based 3D sensing applications. Indium Phosphide has been used since the 1980s as the first PIC platform with laser modulator chips where both the laser and modulator were fabricated monolithically. Since the 1980s, there have been InP based transmitters, receivers, and other functional elements that all support the fiber-communications industry. In fact, over the past 3 decades it has the been the fiber communications industry that has driven the increased performance, miniaturization and simplicity in packaging for PIC based technologies. Also, back in the 1980s, ‘optoelectronics’ was the key word to describe having both electronic and photonic functions or devices on a single chip. This was known in early publications as an optoelectronics integrated circuit (OEIC). Today optoelectronics is synonymous with ‘photonics’, and hence the common-place use of ‘photonics integrated circuits’ for PICs.
In the below figure, it can be seen in red that the incumbent technology for PICs is InP. InP is capable of providing a number of devices and opportunities in both electronics as well as photonics. InP main weakness from a function standpoint is that although it can provide HFETs, JFETs, bipolar electronic devices, it has not been able to successfully penetrate LSI, or VLSI with digital IC circuitry. Chips such as ASICs are not practically available with the InP platform – mostly due to advancement in electronic transistor design, and also through limited maturity in large format wafer manufacturing. Today the majority of InP fabrication is based on 4” or 100mm wafers, and only in the past year have folks been seriously looking at 6” or 150mm InP wafer infrastructure. From the photonics standpoint, there are very good reasons why InP is the incumbent technology – it provides world class performance in lasers, modulators, simple electronics such as drivers and TIAs (transimpedance amplifiers), as well as highly performing active and passive devices such as SOAs, waveguides, spot-size converters, and mux/demux blocks such as AWG and Eschelle gratings.
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Over the past decade, the rise of silicon-based photonics has accelerated quickly (as can be seen in blue in the Figure). Silicon has a huge history in electronics, and it’s been said by many that if the existing infrastructure could be utilized effectively, then the cost of producing photonics with similar fabrication, design, testing, and simulation tools, would become competitive with the current incumbent technology: InP. As can be seen by the figure, silicon is capable of handling many photonics devices in addition to all electronic functionality with CMOS and BiCMOS based technologies. The only photonic device that remains impossible (at least for the time being) is the emitter or laser where light is generated. This has spawned a new segment for silicon photonics (SiP) where engineers and scientists have developed creative ways to implement InP into device, wafer, and epi-designs that are silicon based. These solutions are typically referred to as heterogeneous solutions where both InP and silicon are utilized to create PIC platforms with emitter or laser-based functionality.
While the red area of the Figure represents the incumbent technology InP, the blue areas, Silicon Photonics, the middle areas that are shaded green represent PIC based technologies that can utilize either III-V compound semiconductor platforms such as InP, GaAs, even GaN, as well as silicon platforms such as silicon wafers, and various combinations of silicon-based materials such as SOI (silicon on insulator), SiGe etc. The green areas are represented by both polymers and dielectric materials that can be deposited onto either silicon or III-V material wafers. These combinations of technology allow flexibility in PIC designs where both polymers and dielectrics can provide a multitude of active and passive photonic devices such as: waveguides (W/G), spot size converters (SSC), modulators (such as Mach Zehnder and slot types), multipliers and demultipliers (Mux/Demux variants such as AWGs, MMI, and Echelle gratings). The interesting part of the polymer and dielectric technology is that combinations of active and passive devices can be mixed and matched with either III-V compound devices as well as silicon based, heterogeneous based devices to design more effective and efficient PICs. For polymers, very low voltage can be utilized for low cost, low power consumption, very high-speed modulators that can be deposited onto a semiconductor platform. For dielectric photonics, very low temperature sensitivity mux/demux devices (such as athermal designs) can be deposited onto a semiconductor platform. As can be seen from the Figure, polymer and dielectric technology suffers from that the fact that high density ICs and laser-based emitters are not available but could be integrated with the appropriate designs for the PIC with III-V compound semiconductors and/or silicon based technology that have both DSP/ASIC type circuits and laser emitters.
PIC technologies have a number various and broad applications as can be seen by the Figure below. In this Figure applications range from fiber optic communications, self-driving vehicles, sensing, internet of things, bio-photonics, healthcare, industrial, military, high performance computing etc.
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PIC technologies are based upon semiconductor wafers (such as III-V compound semiconductors – InP, GaAs etc.) as well as silicon wafers (which can be tailored to become SiGe heterogeneous, SOI, etc.). As these platforms are semiconductor based, the wafers are processed in fabs or fabrication facilities to produce devices. As a general rule, silicon has the largest wafers with 8” (200mm) and 12” (300mm) format discs. GaAs typically is running 3” (75mm), 4” (100mm) and 6” (150mm) wafers in production fabs or fabrication plants around the world. There is an expectation that GaAs will eventually move to 8” (200mm) wafers in the next 5 years. InP is in production today on 2” (50mm), 3” (75mm) and 4” (100mm) wafers with an expectation to move to 6” (150mm) in the next 5 years. Heterogeneous solutions with silicon photonics that utilize materials such as SiGe and InP are typically 8” (200mm) and 12” (300mm) format wafers. Polymer photonics can be deposited on either III-V compound semiconductor wafers as well as silicon wafers which makes it suitable for the next generation of PIC based technological platforms for the fiber communications industry.
The supply chain for the PIC industry starts with the wafer development and continues through epitaxial growth, device fabrication, optical sub-assembly, module or transceiver builds, and sub-systems which are implemented into optical networking applications. Within these supply chain segments, a number of combinations of technology can be utilized. For example, CMOS IC circuits can be fabricated onto silicon wafers together with silicon photonics, heterogeneous solutions, that could have the advantage of polymer active devices, and dielectric passive devices on board. InP may be combined with polymer photonics to house on-board or on-wafer emitters to source light for the optical signaling with modulators. Included in the wafers can be combinations of electrical and optical circuitry. Electrical circuitry is usually set up as both as single as well as multilevel interconnects. Optical circuitry is usually set up as a waveguide or optical layer as part of the device fabrication design. PICs can interconnect electrical devices with photonic devices, and also increase chip functionality through the use of electrical and optical active and passive device solutions. Polymer technologies can provide active device function through for example Mach Zehnder modulators, as well as providing passive device function with waveguides, multipliers, and demultipliers.
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ColoradoOur principal executive offices and research and development facility is located at our new office, laboratory and research and development space located at 369 Inverness Parkway, Suite 350, Englewood, Colorado. The new 13,420 square feet Englewood facility includes fully functional 1,000 square feet of class 1,000 cleanroom, 500 square feet of class 10,000 cleanroom, chemistry laboratories, and analytic laboratories. The new Englewood facility streamlines all of our Company’s research and development workflow for greater operational efficiencies. We expect to complete the transition of moving our Newark, Delaware synthetic laboratory and our Longmont, Colorado optical testing laboratory and corporate headquarters to the new Englewood facility by the end of March 2018.
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We currently have 14 full-time employees and 2 part-time employees, and we retain several independent contractors on an as-needed basis. Based on our current development plan we expect to add 3 to 6 additional full-time employees in 2018.
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, such as our Polymer Photonic Integrated Circuits P2ICTM
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One of our significant target markets is the telecommunications historically has not accepted polymer modulators.
One of our significant target markets is the telecommunications market, which demands high reliability optical components. Historically, polymer modulators have not been accepted into this market even though polymer modulators have achieved Telcordia™ based specifications. It is clear that the telecommunications market is demanding higher and higher data rates for its optical components, and may again decide that polymer based modulators are not suitable even if higher data rates, high reliability, and low power consumption are demonstrated
Another of our significant target markets is the datacommunications (datacenter and/or high performance computing) market, which may be subject to heavy competition from other PIC based technologies such as silicon photonics and Indium Phosphide.
Another of our significant target markets is the datacommunications (datacenter and/or high performance computing) market, which may be subject to heavy competition from other PIC based technologies such as silicon photonics and Indium Phosphide. As the demands for high performance, low cost ($/Gbps) is implemented into next generation architectures, polymer modulators and polymer based PIC products may be subject to significant competition. Furthermore, there is a potential that technologies such as silicon photonics and Indium Phosphide might reach the might reach the metric of $1/Gbps at 400Gbps before ours. Customers may then be less willing to purchase new technology such as ours or invest in new technology development such as ours for next generation systems.
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Our operating expenses were $5,523,538 and $4,135,578 for the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively, for an increase of $1,387,960. The increase in operating expenses is primarily due to increases in non-cash stock option and warrant amortization research and development salaries, legal fees, patent amortization and patent related expenses, product development consulting expenses, product prototype development and material testing expenses, laboratory materials and supplies recruiting fees, fees for disposal of obsolete equipment materials, rent, license fees, insurance expense, accounting fees, shareholder annual meeting expenses and other tax expenses offset by decreases in general and administrative salaries, general and administrative consulting, investor relations expenses, software expenses, general and administrative travel expenses and internet and web design fees.
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The increase in research and development expenses is primarily due to increases in non-cash stock option and warrant amortization, research and development salaries, patent amortization and patent related expenses, product development consulting expenses, product prototype development and material testing expenses, laboratory materials and supplies, materials, rent and license fees
I did my best
See Many of You in Denver
Xster
Best to copy and paste in word, print it, 14 pages or so.
it used just read CMOS (inserted “Indium Phosphide (InP), Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), and other semiconductor”) Manufacturing. (Very Important)
Current legacy technology is based on inorganic crystalline materials, which has allowed for the proliferation of data over fiber optic cables. However, there are inherent molecular deficiencies that have prevented this technology from scaling down in price and up in functionality., especially in terms of $/Gbps. (Huge)
The polymer materials are then part of an integrated photonics platform that can house other photonic devices, such as lasers, waveguides etc.
In April 2017 we achieved bandwidth suitable for 25Gbps data rates in an all-organic polymer ridge waveguide intensity modulator prototype, a significant improvement over our initial 10Gbps device modulator prototype that was announced in 2016. This breakthrough was significant because a 25Gbps data rate is important to the optical networking industry because this data rate is a major node to achieve 100 Gbps (using 4 channels of 25 Gbps). In July 2017 we advanced our high-speed modulation performance to satisfy 28Gbps data rates for QSFP28 standards and 100Gbps data center applications.
In September 2017 we achieved outstanding performance of our ridge waveguide Mach-Zehnder modulators ahead of schedule, with bandwidth performance levels that will enable 50Gbps modulation in fiber-optic communications. This important achievement will allow users to utilize arrays of 4 x 50Gbps polymer modulators using PAM-4 encoding to access 400Gbps data rate systems. Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) is an encoding scheme that can double the amount of data that can be transmitted.
We are now optimizing our high-performance modulators against typical specifications that are required by the fiber communications industry. Furthermore, we are packaging our modulators with our packaging partner so that potential customers can evaluate our high-performance modulators in their systems. One of the most under-evaluated processes of developing high speed devices onto a new and novel technology platform is robustness and reliability. We have already made extensive progress with our polymer materials on this front, and now we are integrating our robust polymer materials onto an integrated photonics platform to provide customers with a more miniaturized, higher performance solution for their data rich systems.
We have also shown that with standard simulation and modeling of our devices, there is a potential to scale the high-speed performance beyond that of 50Gbps, thus providing a technology platform for even greater data rates in the future. This means that our technology platform using polymers is both scalable in high performance as well as scalable in miniaturization and low cost, something that the fiber communications industry has been searching for a long time.
Initially, we fabricated our ridge waveguide modulator to prove the viability of our materials and anticipated that the initial prototype alpha would target the specific OC-48 niche in the telecommunications market operating at 2.5 Gbps. However, our initial prototype demonstrated significantly better potential data rates, which lead us to believe that further refinements to the design could not only address the telecommunications market operating at 2.5 Gbps, but also address certain segments of both the data communications and cloud computing markets. Subsequently, further testing of our electro-optic polymer material conducted by a third-party testing equipment firm indicated that our material could operate at 25 Gbps or higher with further optimization.
A 25 Gbps data rate would allow us to squarely address the 100 Gbps modulator market (composed of transceiver designs that multiplex 4 signals at 25 Gbps together to reach 100 Gbps), which is not only experiencing the greatest market demand today, but is expected to maintain this demand as a key node in data communication performance levels. We believe that the smaller footprint of our ridge waveguide modulator (compared to currently installed inorganic-enabled legacy devices), along with lower potential drive voltage and other undisclosed features, will enable our Company to garner significant market share across the entire telecommunications, data communications and data center value chain.
On December 27, 2016 we announced that our first prototype alpha was 10 Gbps capable (four times faster than our initial anticipated rate), and had achieved 3dB bandwidths of up to 20GHz. These performance achievements not only confirmed that our ridge waveguide modulator is capable of 10 Gbps, but with fine-tuning device parameters, that it is capable of 25 Gbps in the very near future. The key to the performance increase at 10 Gbps was attention to utilizing our high performance organic polymers into a robust fabrication design as a ridge waveguide modulator
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For the past several decades, diverse corporate interests, including, to our knowledge, IBM, Lockheed Martin, DuPont, AT&T Bell Labs, Honeywell , ADDED (Motorola, HP), as well as others
attempted to produce high-performance…….
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We understand from initial conversations with data center (ADDED architects and designers) that the temperature specifications that our materials achieve are compliant with their equipment design needs.
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ADDED all new verbiage “polymer materials. Our intellectual property portfolio has expanded significantly over the last year as we are developing our P2IC™ into prototypes. We have filed more than 6 patents during 2017 and are currently in the process of readying a number of other inventions for formal filing later in 2018. We expect to continue innovating with our P2IC platform during 2018, and expect to at least maintain this level of invention at our Company during the whole of 2018. Our focus for 2018 is to establish the world’s first unique PerkinamineTM polymer based integrated photonics circuit portfolio of patents to support our working prototypes.
We have filed 2 patents in 2018, and we expect another patent to be filed by early March 2018. In total, our patent portfolio consists of 13 granted patents that include 4 from the US, 1 from Canada, 5 from the EU, 2 from Japan and 1 from China.
Our materials patent portfolio has also strengthened significantly in 2017 with the filing of additional new patent applications on our core PerkinamineTM molecular compounds as well as recent, innovative inventions that are expected to protect our P2IC polymer PIC platform from potential competition.
Included in our patent portfolio are the following nonlinear optic chromophore designs
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Corning chapter - We elected to exercise our termination rights under the agreement effective January 1, 2018.
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In April 2017 we achieved bandwidth suitable for 25Gbps data rates in an all-organic polymer ridge waveguide intensity modulator prototype, a significant improvement over our initial 10Gbps device modulator prototype. This breakthrough was significant because a 25Gbps data rate is important to the optical networking industry because this data rate is a major node to achieve 100 Gbps (using 4 channels of 25 Gbps). In July 2017 we advanced our high-speed modulation performance to satisfy 28Gbps data rates for QSFP28 standards and 100Gbps data center applications.
In September 2017 we achieved outstanding performance of our ridge waveguide Mach-Zehnder modulators ahead of schedule, with bandwidth performance levels that will enable 50Gbps modulation in fiber-optic communications. This important achievement will allow users to utilize arrays of 4 x 50Gbps polymer modulators using PAM-4 encoding to access 400Gbps data rate systems. Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) is an encoding scheme that can double the amount of data that can be transmitted.
In February As we move forward through 2017, we expect to (i) bring in-house more specific skill sets in materials engineering and in device testing and fabrication, as well as personnel to orchestrate our various Company activities; and (ii) attract an industry partner with the synergistic capabilities necessary to help develop future products that are in various stages of design, such as a slot waveguide modulator and our integrated fiber optic polymer-based transceiver.
The 2018 we began the transition of moving our Newark, Delaware synthetic laboratory and our Longmont, Colorado optical testing laboratory and corporate headquarters to our new office, laboratory and research and development space located at 369 Inverness Parkway, Suite 350, Englewood, Colorado. The new 13,420 square feet Englewood facility includes fully functional 1,000 square feet of class 1,000 cleanroom, 500 square feet of class 10,000 cleanroom, chemistry laboratories, and analytic laboratories. The new Englewood facility streamlines all of our Company’s research and development workflow for greater operational efficiencies. We expect to complete the transition of moving our Newark, Delaware synthetic laboratory and our Longmont, Colorado optical testing laboratory and corporate headquarters to the new Englewood facility by the end of March 2018.
As we move forward through 2018, we expect to continue building our world-class design team for both polymer materials and integrated photonics technology platform to further optimize our P2IC™ platform. With the now consolidated facility in Englewood, Colorado, we will complete our clean-room and laboratories so that we can keep key technologies and processes internal to the Company. We will package our modulators for customer evaluation, and will continue to design our polymers for improved data rates and lower power operation. We will engage with customers to fine tune our technology to meet customer expectations, and we will scale our technology to provide cost effective technological solutions for the fiber communications market segments. We will partner with other companies as necessary, e.g. our packaging partner in 2017/18 is allowing us to move quickly towards customer prototypes.
The Global Photonic Device Market
General Overview
Lightwave Logic has been reviewing the latest market data as well as its own internal data for its business strategy, and below we detail the global market dynamics both in terms of data traffic as well as how PIC based technologies will grow in the fiber communications segment of the market.
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As we have already seen with products such as smart phones, lap top computers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), Internet traffic is one of the important metrics that is being used to show activity in fiber communications, and particularly telecommunications as well as datacommunications (which includes datacenters and high-performance computing). Internet Protocol (IP) traffic has typically been used to gauge the amount of data that is being used on the internet as shown in the graph below (sourced from Cisco VNI in 2018). The metric is Exabytes per month. An Exabyte is 1E18 which is 1000 Petabytes, or 1000,000 Terabytes or a billion Gigabytes of data. As seen from the graph which has a strong growth of 22% CAGR (2015-2020), the majority of the traffic is being driven by video, traffic, and is fast approaching the metric of Zetta which is 1E21 bytes of data. Some estimates are discussing the further metric of Yotta which is 1E24 bytes of data over the next decade, which is also expected to be driven for the most part by video.
Within Photonic the overall market trends of IP traffic growth, the internet will need to be able to support high volumes of data traffic. In order to do this, the fiber-optic infrastructure that allows data to be communicated between network nodes such as datacenters, within datacenters, and optical network switches etc., has to be upgraded. Today, fiber-optic networks are a combination of long, medium and short optical interconnects that range from 3 meters (or 1yard) to over 1000km depending on application in the optical network. Optical components, typically known as photonics components are used to build the fiber-optic infrastructure and consist of things like: laser diode, photodetectors, multipliers, modulators, transceivers etc. These are known as discrete components, while a mix of these components that are integrated or connected on a single substrate (such as silicon, InP, GaAs etc.) are called PICs (Photonic Integrated Components). The summary photonics market has been reviewed in 2017 and is shown below. The summary photonics market is forecast to grow to $43B by 2025 with a 7% CAGR (20-25) that includes both discrete and PIC photonic components. The summary photonics components market is forecasted to reach $21B in 2017.
Within the summary photonics components market, three major segments exist: WAN (wide area networks), access, and Datacom. The WAN segment is forecast to grow to $27B by 2025 with a 19% CARG (20-25) and the Datacom segment is forecast to grow to $12.1B by 2025 with 22% CAGR (20-25). As can be seen from the graph below, the growth of the WAN and Datacom segments is forecasted to be very strong over the next decade and provide the engine for growth in the overall global photonics components market.
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One of the key metrics that is needed for any overall market analysis is how photonics components will grow over the next decade from a PIC perspective. This is important as the trend to integrate photonics components is beginning to accelerate. The trend has been driven by customer applications that require smaller photonic component solutions, lower power, high data rates, larger buildings for longer interconnect lengths, and more economic in terms of $/Gbps. PIC technologies, i.e. those technologies that include integrated photonics are forecasted to grow to ~$30B by 2025 with 16% CAGR (20-25). These technologies include InP which is the current incumbent, GaAs, and other newer integrated technology solutions such as SiP (silicon photonics), polymer photonics, and dielectric photonics. The forecast of ~$30B is approximately 69% of the summary photonics components market by 2025, which represents a huge acceleration for PIC based technologies over the next decade. This also means while PIC based technologies are $7B today with 24% of the photonics components market, PIC based technologies become de facto by 2025.
While the rise of PIC based technologies is exciting, what also is exciting in the photonics component market is the rise of fiber-optic transceivers. Transceivers are small boxes located at the end of each fiber-optic link that house photonics components and PIC components which send and receive data. While the global overall photonic components market is expected to reach $43B by 2025, the photonics transceivers sub-segment is forecasted to grow to $25B by this time. This represents that transceivers will accelerate to 58% of the global overall photonics market by 2025 and become a major driver for optical networking over the next decade.
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The key segments in photonics based fiber-optic transceivers achieved $11.3B in 2017 with growth from 9 different segments that include: AOC, CATV, Fibre Channel, DWDM, Ethernet-datacom, WAN-client side, Radio etc., based transceivers. Three of these segments are forecasted to grow very well to achieve revenues of $25B by 2025, with the biggest contributions from DWDM, Ethernet-datacom, and WAN-client based transceivers.
The transceiver growth shows which sub-segments that will utilize small boxes at the ends of fiber-optic interconnects, it is well known that transceiver trends over the past decade have been towards smaller boxes i.e. smaller transceiver formats and footprints (such as SFF, SFP, QSFP, and many others), with higher densities of photonics components designed into them. It is expected over the forecast period that transceivers will be an excellent platform for the accelerating trends of PICs in both telecom and datacom applications. The graph below shows the PIC transceiver forecast to 2025. PIC transceivers are forecast to reach $20B by 2025 with 17% CARG (20-25) growing from $3.2B in 2017. What is more interesting is that by about 2021, PIC transceivers will lead discrete photonic component transceivers from a revenue standpoint. This means that the trend to integrate photonics components inside a transceiver is accelerating quickly, driven by the customer interest for smaller, denser, and higher performance metrics of transceivers. This trend is ideal for our polymer based integrated photonics platform to have a huge impact in the market segment over the next decade.
Within the PIC transceivers market there are a number of sub-segments that summate to $20B by 2025. The major segments that drive this forecast are Ethernet, DWDM, and WAN-client-side applications as can be seen from the graph below. In particular these segments are technologically driven by PIC based technologies that operate at 100Gbps and 400Gbps data rates that generally are considered high performance solutions.
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Data rates and high performance of transceivers can be seen by the graph below which depicts PIC based technologies in the Ethernet sub-segment. For Ethernet applications only, transceivers are driven by 100GE based PIC technologies. The market is forecast with 100GE to grow to $4.5B by 2025 with 6% CAGR (20-25) and with 400GE to grow to $0.98B by 2025 with 16% CAGR (20-25). This is a clear drive for the PIC based transceivers in the Ethernet application is 100GE over the forecast period and sets the scene for polymer based integrated photonics to have the opportunity to grow extremely quickly.
As the Company is developing polymer based photonic devices such as fiber-optic modulators , these devices translate electric signals into optical signals allow laser based technology to operate effectively at 50Gbps and beyond. Lasers with modulator are used in fiber communication systems to transfer data over fiber-optic networks. today and are expected to be a key driver in photonics components for PIC based technological solutions over the next decade. Optical data transfer using lasers and modulators is significantly faster and more efficient than transfer technologies using only electric signals, permitting more cost-effective use of bandwidth for broadband Internet and voice services.
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The overall square footage in datacenters has been growing rapidly over the past 5 years, and is expected to continue this trend over the next decade.
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Links that are shorter than 500 meters “and operate at approximately 10Gbps” can employ “direct modulation,” which accomplishes modulation by mechanically turning a laser on and off. However, for links greater than 500 meters “and higher data rates such as 25Gbps, 40Gbps, and beyond”, it is necessary to employ optical modulators. We intend to target optical devices that are aimed at the 500m to 10km distance segment of the market. “that operate at 25Gbps and higher data rates”. These are single mode fiber links and require polymer optical devices that operate in single optical mode. While some data center customers are planning their architectures using single mode fiber links even below 500m, others are focusing on cost-performance to make their decisions for their particular architectures. Our technology is both single mode and scalable “in both increased data rates and low cost”, which means that it can be implemented in either data center application depending on how we achieve the customer metrics and specifications. We believe that our single mode modulator solutions will not only be competitive at 500m to 10km link distances “at 25Gbps data rates and beyond”, but also at distances below 500m “at 25Gbps and beyond” depending on the customer architecture designs.
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All added
Industry issues of scaling
The key issues facing the fiber-optic communications industry are the economic progress and scalability of any PIC based technological platform. The polymer platform is unique in that it is truly scalable. Scalable means being able to scale up for high speed data rates, while simultaneously being able to scale down in cost. This allows a competitive cost per data rate or cost per Gbps metric to be achieved.
Fiber optic datacentre and high-performance computing customers want to achieve the metric of $1/Gbps @ 400Gbps (this essentially means a single mode fiber optic link that has a total cost of $400 and operates with a data rate of 400Gbps à which also means that each transceiver at each end of the fiber optic link must be able to be priced at $200), but as industry tries to match this target, it is already falling behind as can be seen in the Figure below which plots generic typical PIC based technology:
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In the above figures (where the left-hand graph is a linear vertical scale, and the right-hand graph is a log scale), it can be seen that the orange curve plots the customer expectation, while the other color curves show $/Gbps improvement over time for various high-speed data rate transceivers using PIC based technologies. A gap is appearing between what customer expect and what the technologists can produce.
Polymers play an important role in PICs over the next decade as they can reduce or close the gap between customer expectations and technical performance through effective scaling increase of high performance with low cost. This is shown in the Figure below how polymers have the potential to scale to the needs of the customers over the next 3-5years.
Some of the things needed to achieve the scaling performance of polymers in n integrated photonics platform is within sight today:
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Increased r33 (which leads to very low Vpi in modulator devices) and we are currently optimizing our polymers for this.
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Increase temperature stability so that the polymers can operate at broader temperature ranges effective, where we have made significant progress over the past few years.
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Low optical loss in waveguides and active/passive devices for improved optical budget metrics which is currently an ongoing development program at our Company
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Higher levels of hermeticity for lower cost packaging of optical sub-assemblies within a transceiver module, where our advanced designs are being implemented into polymer-based packages.
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Check it out Crossed out Continue to utilize outside consultants to gain technical expertise ALL NEW --? Recruit Technical Expertise
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Leonberger elected to our Board of Directors and serves as a member of the operations committee and assists with the technical direction and strategy of the company
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In September 2017 we announced that our initial alpha prototype ridge waveguide modulator, enabled by our P2IC™ polymer system, demonstrated bandwidth performance levels that will enable 50Gbps modulation in fiber-optic communications. This device demonstrated true amplitude (intensity) modulation in a Mach-Zehnder modulator structure incorporating our polymer waveguides.
This important achievement will allow users to utilize arrays of 4 x 50Gbps polymer modulators using PAM-4 encoding to access 400Gbps data rate systems. Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) is an encoding scheme that can double the amount of data that can be transmitted. These ridge waveguide modulators are currently being packaged with our partner and will be available for evaluation by potential customers in 2018. In parallel, we are simulating and modeling the modulators for scalability to higher data rates above 50Gbps and lower cost structures that will be competitive with incumbent technology. This provides our technology platform with higher levels of scalability and will provide potential customers with technological solutions that they are currently looking for.
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We continued with our collaborative development of our SOH/ Polymer photonic slot waveguide modulator in 2014 and continued our collaboration with an associated third -party research group in 2017 and expect to see initial results in 2018.
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Our Competition
Competitive Technologies - PIC Based Technologies
PIC technologies have historically been driven using III-V compound semiconductors, namely InP, although GaAs remains a strong PIC platform, and is expected to strengthen via the VCSEL based 3D sensing applications. Indium Phosphide has been used since the 1980s as the first PIC platform with laser modulator chips where both the laser and modulator were fabricated monolithically. Since the 1980s, there have been InP based transmitters, receivers, and other functional elements that all support the fiber-communications industry. In fact, over the past 3 decades it has the been the fiber communications industry that has driven the increased performance, miniaturization and simplicity in packaging for PIC based technologies. Also, back in the 1980s, ‘optoelectronics’ was the key word to describe having both electronic and photonic functions or devices on a single chip. This was known in early publications as an optoelectronics integrated circuit (OEIC). Today optoelectronics is synonymous with ‘photonics’, and hence the common-place use of ‘photonics integrated circuits’ for PICs.
In the below figure, it can be seen in red that the incumbent technology for PICs is InP. InP is capable of providing a number of devices and opportunities in both electronics as well as photonics. InP main weakness from a function standpoint is that although it can provide HFETs, JFETs, bipolar electronic devices, it has not been able to successfully penetrate LSI, or VLSI with digital IC circuitry. Chips such as ASICs are not practically available with the InP platform – mostly due to advancement in electronic transistor design, and also through limited maturity in large format wafer manufacturing. Today the majority of InP fabrication is based on 4” or 100mm wafers, and only in the past year have folks been seriously looking at 6” or 150mm InP wafer infrastructure. From the photonics standpoint, there are very good reasons why InP is the incumbent technology – it provides world class performance in lasers, modulators, simple electronics such as drivers and TIAs (transimpedance amplifiers), as well as highly performing active and passive devices such as SOAs, waveguides, spot-size converters, and mux/demux blocks such as AWG and Eschelle gratings.
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Over the past decade, the rise of silicon-based photonics has accelerated quickly (as can be seen in blue in the Figure). Silicon has a huge history in electronics, and it’s been said by many that if the existing infrastructure could be utilized effectively, then the cost of producing photonics with similar fabrication, design, testing, and simulation tools, would become competitive with the current incumbent technology: InP. As can be seen by the figure, silicon is capable of handling many photonics devices in addition to all electronic functionality with CMOS and BiCMOS based technologies. The only photonic device that remains impossible (at least for the time being) is the emitter or laser where light is generated. This has spawned a new segment for silicon photonics (SiP) where engineers and scientists have developed creative ways to implement InP into device, wafer, and epi-designs that are silicon based. These solutions are typically referred to as heterogeneous solutions where both InP and silicon are utilized to create PIC platforms with emitter or laser-based functionality.
While the red area of the Figure represents the incumbent technology InP, the blue areas, Silicon Photonics, the middle areas that are shaded green represent PIC based technologies that can utilize either III-V compound semiconductor platforms such as InP, GaAs, even GaN, as well as silicon platforms such as silicon wafers, and various combinations of silicon-based materials such as SOI (silicon on insulator), SiGe etc. The green areas are represented by both polymers and dielectric materials that can be deposited onto either silicon or III-V material wafers. These combinations of technology allow flexibility in PIC designs where both polymers and dielectrics can provide a multitude of active and passive photonic devices such as: waveguides (W/G), spot size converters (SSC), modulators (such as Mach Zehnder and slot types), multipliers and demultipliers (Mux/Demux variants such as AWGs, MMI, and Echelle gratings). The interesting part of the polymer and dielectric technology is that combinations of active and passive devices can be mixed and matched with either III-V compound devices as well as silicon based, heterogeneous based devices to design more effective and efficient PICs. For polymers, very low voltage can be utilized for low cost, low power consumption, very high-speed modulators that can be deposited onto a semiconductor platform. For dielectric photonics, very low temperature sensitivity mux/demux devices (such as athermal designs) can be deposited onto a semiconductor platform. As can be seen from the Figure, polymer and dielectric technology suffers from that the fact that high density ICs and laser-based emitters are not available but could be integrated with the appropriate designs for the PIC with III-V compound semiconductors and/or silicon based technology that have both DSP/ASIC type circuits and laser emitters.
PIC technologies have a number various and broad applications as can be seen by the Figure below. In this Figure applications range from fiber optic communications, self-driving vehicles, sensing, internet of things, bio-photonics, healthcare, industrial, military, high performance computing etc.
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PIC technologies are based upon semiconductor wafers (such as III-V compound semiconductors – InP, GaAs etc.) as well as silicon wafers (which can be tailored to become SiGe heterogeneous, SOI, etc.). As these platforms are semiconductor based, the wafers are processed in fabs or fabrication facilities to produce devices. As a general rule, silicon has the largest wafers with 8” (200mm) and 12” (300mm) format discs. GaAs typically is running 3” (75mm), 4” (100mm) and 6” (150mm) wafers in production fabs or fabrication plants around the world. There is an expectation that GaAs will eventually move to 8” (200mm) wafers in the next 5 years. InP is in production today on 2” (50mm), 3” (75mm) and 4” (100mm) wafers with an expectation to move to 6” (150mm) in the next 5 years. Heterogeneous solutions with silicon photonics that utilize materials such as SiGe and InP are typically 8” (200mm) and 12” (300mm) format wafers. Polymer photonics can be deposited on either III-V compound semiconductor wafers as well as silicon wafers which makes it suitable for the next generation of PIC based technological platforms for the fiber communications industry.
The supply chain for the PIC industry starts with the wafer development and continues through epitaxial growth, device fabrication, optical sub-assembly, module or transceiver builds, and sub-systems which are implemented into optical networking applications. Within these supply chain segments, a number of combinations of technology can be utilized. For example, CMOS IC circuits can be fabricated onto silicon wafers together with silicon photonics, heterogeneous solutions, that could have the advantage of polymer active devices, and dielectric passive devices on board. InP may be combined with polymer photonics to house on-board or on-wafer emitters to source light for the optical signaling with modulators. Included in the wafers can be combinations of electrical and optical circuitry. Electrical circuitry is usually set up as both as single as well as multilevel interconnects. Optical circuitry is usually set up as a waveguide or optical layer as part of the device fabrication design. PICs can interconnect electrical devices with photonic devices, and also increase chip functionality through the use of electrical and optical active and passive device solutions. Polymer technologies can provide active device function through for example Mach Zehnder modulators, as well as providing passive device function with waveguides, multipliers, and demultipliers.
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ColoradoOur principal executive offices and research and development facility is located at our new office, laboratory and research and development space located at 369 Inverness Parkway, Suite 350, Englewood, Colorado. The new 13,420 square feet Englewood facility includes fully functional 1,000 square feet of class 1,000 cleanroom, 500 square feet of class 10,000 cleanroom, chemistry laboratories, and analytic laboratories. The new Englewood facility streamlines all of our Company’s research and development workflow for greater operational efficiencies. We expect to complete the transition of moving our Newark, Delaware synthetic laboratory and our Longmont, Colorado optical testing laboratory and corporate headquarters to the new Englewood facility by the end of March 2018.
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We currently have 14 full-time employees and 2 part-time employees, and we retain several independent contractors on an as-needed basis. Based on our current development plan we expect to add 3 to 6 additional full-time employees in 2018.
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, such as our Polymer Photonic Integrated Circuits P2ICTM
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One of our significant target markets is the telecommunications historically has not accepted polymer modulators.
One of our significant target markets is the telecommunications market, which demands high reliability optical components. Historically, polymer modulators have not been accepted into this market even though polymer modulators have achieved Telcordia™ based specifications. It is clear that the telecommunications market is demanding higher and higher data rates for its optical components, and may again decide that polymer based modulators are not suitable even if higher data rates, high reliability, and low power consumption are demonstrated
Another of our significant target markets is the datacommunications (datacenter and/or high performance computing) market, which may be subject to heavy competition from other PIC based technologies such as silicon photonics and Indium Phosphide.
Another of our significant target markets is the datacommunications (datacenter and/or high performance computing) market, which may be subject to heavy competition from other PIC based technologies such as silicon photonics and Indium Phosphide. As the demands for high performance, low cost ($/Gbps) is implemented into next generation architectures, polymer modulators and polymer based PIC products may be subject to significant competition. Furthermore, there is a potential that technologies such as silicon photonics and Indium Phosphide might reach the might reach the metric of $1/Gbps at 400Gbps before ours. Customers may then be less willing to purchase new technology such as ours or invest in new technology development such as ours for next generation systems.
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Our operating expenses were $5,523,538 and $4,135,578 for the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively, for an increase of $1,387,960. The increase in operating expenses is primarily due to increases in non-cash stock option and warrant amortization research and development salaries, legal fees, patent amortization and patent related expenses, product development consulting expenses, product prototype development and material testing expenses, laboratory materials and supplies recruiting fees, fees for disposal of obsolete equipment materials, rent, license fees, insurance expense, accounting fees, shareholder annual meeting expenses and other tax expenses offset by decreases in general and administrative salaries, general and administrative consulting, investor relations expenses, software expenses, general and administrative travel expenses and internet and web design fees.
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The increase in research and development expenses is primarily due to increases in non-cash stock option and warrant amortization, research and development salaries, patent amortization and patent related expenses, product development consulting expenses, product prototype development and material testing expenses, laboratory materials and supplies, materials, rent and license fees
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