There is also a strong common belief that silicon photonics will further expand its market presence across various applications. Some challenges remain, and a lot of effort is spent by the industry and research communities to find solutions. The limited modulation speeds are a bottleneck for applying silicon photonics for pluggables reliably beyond 100Gbps.

In our vision, the combination of heterogeneous and hybrid integration is the short-term answer to keep up with that trend. By combining different technologies for specific components no compromises need to be taken. For example, currently alternatives like EML are the dominant technology for high speed pluggables.

800G TOSA Architecture

Integrated Optical Module

alternative TOSA architecture

The challenge though is shifted towards complexity of the assembly of the product. As many parts need to be assembled, aligned, and tuned, the process is labor intensive, prone to assembly errors and results in lower yield of the product.

OneTouch Technology envisions an alternative TOSA architecture, that starts from a low-cost high power CW laser, technology depending on the application. That power is fed into the modulator photonic chip where it is split into 4 or 8 parallel Mach-Zender modulators.

More technologies

TFLN Modulator Technology

Thin-Film Lithium Niobate technology is a groundbreaking advancement in optical communication. It combines the strengths of high speed lithium niobate modulator technology with the the scalability of silicon photonics technology.

Heterogeneous Integration

OneTouch Technology has invested extensive research efforts into developing a reliable bonding process for Thin-film Lithium Niobate layers onto silicon on insulator materials such as Si, SiN, and SiO.

Optical Interconnects

As silicon photonic circuits continue to take steps towards an increased integration level, new challenges related to optical connectivity rise accordingly. The advent of AI creates a necessity for increased bandwidths between processors and memory, with optical interfaces that need high density and easy alignment.