Israel Tower Semiconductor will develop an optoelectronic foundry process that can manufacture integrated lasers on silicon with partial funding support from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) “Universal Micro-scale Optical System Laser” (LUMOS) project. Tower mainly provides high-value analog semiconductor foundry services.

The benefits of integrating lasers on silicon include increasing the density of the laser, reducing the coupling loss between the laser and the optoelectronic device, reducing the required devices, and greatly simplifying the packaging scheme. The new process will combine high-performance Ш-V laser diodes with Tower’s PH18 silicon photoelectric platform. When combined with Tower’s passive and active silicon optoelectronic devices (such as silicon and silicon nitride waveguides, Mach-Zehnder modulators and Ge photodiodes), it will make it impossible to obtain new products  from bulk semiconductor or photonics foundries today become possible.

Multi-project wafer operation will be launched after the new process is ready. The first version of the Process Development Kit (PDK) is expected to be launched in 2021, including lasers and amplifiers. The research results will become part of DARPA’s LUMOS project.

The LUMOS project aims to introduce high-performance lasers into an advanced photonics platform, including three different technical fields to solve multiple commercial and defense applications.

1. Bring high-performance lasers and optical amplifiers into advanced optoelectronic manufacturing foundries in the United States, and the research results will be provided to the R&D team in the form of MPW. Research team: Tower Semiconductor and New York State Institute of Technology.
2. Develop high-power lasers and amplifiers for fast photonics platforms in microwave applications. Research team: Ultra-low loss technology company, Quintessent, Harvard University and Sandia National Laboratory.

3. Develop precise lasers and integrated photonic circuits for visible spectrum applications. The goal is to achieve “designed wavelengths as required by design” in an unprecedented spectral range.  Research team: NexusPhotonics, Yale University, California Institute of Technology, Sandia National Laboratory and University of Colorado Boulder.