Tower Semiconductor and Anello Photonics Announce Strategic Partnership for a New Silicon Optical Waveguide Process Technology
November 15, 2021
News
Tower Semiconductor, the foundry of analog semiconductor solutions, and Anello Photonics, the developer of the Silicon Photonic Optical Gyroscope (SiPhOG), announced a strategic partnership for a new low-loss Silicon Optical Waveguide technology and manufacturing process.
The foundry version of the process is designed to enable adoption in a range of markets such as automotive LiDAR, bio-sensing, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, microwave photonics, and optical communications requiring complex integration of high-performance optical devices.
The new low-loss Silicon Nitride waveguide process approaches 0.005dB/cm propagation loss at 1550nm wavelengths with less than 1mm bend radius. Per the companies, this process delivers one to two orders of magnitude lower loss than other commercial foundry processes at a compact bend radius for both 1550nm and 1310nm wavelengths. The combination of low loss along with small bend radius enables fabrication of a new class of high performing devices, including long (>10m) delays lines and tiny on-chip resonators with high quality factors (high-Q) surpassing 100 million.
Anello Photonics and Tower Semiconductor have developed this process over the last eighteen months, and Anello's SiPhOG gyroscope utilizes the process to directly replace the optical fiber found in a traditional Fiber Optic Gyroscope. A foundry version of this process is being offered by Tower to its customers beginning in Q1 2022.
For more information, visit: www.towersemi.com or www.anellophotonics.com
