Processing of organic electro-optic materials for commercial applications

Ultrafast telecommunications, computing, data processing, and sensing are critical to meeting the demands of modern and next generation networking, data transmission, and communications. Hybrid organic electro-optic (OEO) systems enable high-speed, energy-efficient, chip integrated solutions that significantly surpass the SWaP-CP of incumbent material technologies. Current technology infrastructure is facing constraints in computing speed, network capacity, and power efficiency while OEO materials integrated on-chip offer a scalable, market-transforming solution that enables “more than Moore” growth. Recent research milestones demonstrate OEO materials integrated into nanoscale waveguides, yielding > 500 GHz EO bandwidth, power consumption < 100 aJ/bit, and device footprints < 10 μm2. This performance has the potential to transform computing, enable ultrafast digital signal processing, 5G+ telecommunications, sensing, and electromagnetic interference (EMI/EMP) resilience. Key to enabling such commercial and governmental applications is the efficient processing of the materials when integrating into devices at large scale. In addition, materials must meet standard requirements for stability when exposed to varied environmental conditions including heat, humidity, and cold shock. Herein we describe recent results on the reliability of commercially available OEO materials. We also present a plan for these materials to be integrated into SOH and POH devices, and processed using existing commercial semiconductor and photonics foundry infrastructure. With these recent results demonstrating promising environmental stability, OEO materials are poised to be integrated into commercial SOH and POH devices at scale.