August 23, 2004 Somerset, NJ -- ASIP, Inc., a developer of photonic integrated circuits and provider of high-speed lasers for optical transceivers, announced that ThreeFive Photonics B.V., its wholly owned subsidiary in the Netherlands, has secured a government contract from SenterNovem, part of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, worth $2.5 million. The money will be used to explore integration strategies using ASIP's Asymmetric Twinguide (ATG) technology.
ASIP will partner with the COBRA Research School of the Technical University of Eindhoven to research new technologies, such as quantum dot active regions, high-aspect-ratio photonic band gap structures, and advanced integrated device designs, to help eliminate the traditional barriers to achieving large-scale optoelectronic integration. These barriers include high power dissipation, the need for thermoelectric cooling, and poor manufacturing yields.
The $2.5 million represents the second award SenterNovem has granted to ThreeFive, according to Mike Decelle, ASIP president and CEO. The first grant focused on ThreeFive's original multiwavelength planar lightwave circuit technology. The present award will see ASIP and COBRA working to use ATG as a platform for integration, with COBRA bringing expertise in quantum dots, photonic band gaps, and related technology. The SenterNovern money is part of a Dutch government program to promote high-tech development in the Netherlands, in this case the work of COBRA. The money is meant to at least partially offset funding ASIP will provide. Decelle declined to reveal how much money ASIP will devote to the project, other than to say the Dutch money would fund "more than half" of the research.
Decelle foresees that any advances emerging from the research will be applied to communications, which has been ASIP's primary focus. However, he says the applications may expand beyond telecommunications to include military communications as well.
ATG technology is designed to provide a highly scalable platform for monolithic photonic integration. ASIP is already delivering ATG-based 10-Gbit/sec 1310-nm EML devices and has a number of design wins, Decelle says. The EMLs deliver 10-km reach an operate over a temperature range of 0 to 95 degrees C. Devices for 1550-nm DWDM applications are on the way, Decelle says. Meanwhile, the work with COBRA will further development of additional functional integration.
-- S. Hardy