OCP Acquires Cielo's VCSEL TechnologyOctober 14, 2002...Optical Communication Products Inc. (OCP, listed on Nasdaq under the symbol
"OCPI") of Chatsworth, California USA has announced it has acquired
"certain assets" of privately-held Cielo Communications of Broomfield,
Colorado USA which specializes in VCSEL technology. According to OCP, Cielo
Communications' technology will enhance OCP's ability to accelerate the integration
of 1300 nm VCSEL sources into multi-channel optical modules and that these parallel
array optical modules offer the advantages of high optical port density and
low power consumption which are required by the next generation optical networking
applications. "We believe that single mode long wavelength VCSEL technology
is a key enabling building block for the next generation of optical modules.
The acquisition of Cielo Communications gives us the opportunity to expand our
product portfolio to include optical modules based on 1300 nm VCSEL arrays,"
said Dr. Muoi V. Tran, CEO and President of OCP. "Furthermore we are pleased
to have added some very talented people whom we believe will make a significant
contribution to OCP's success in the future." Financial terms of the acquisition
were not disclosed but OCP did say that the purchase price includes the acquisition
of capital equipment, inventory and intellectual property and that OCP has hired
approximately 20 former Cielo Communications employees and will continue to
operate in Broomfield, Colorado. The transaction was formally completed on October
9, 2002. For those unfamiliar with OCP, it was founded in 1991 and Furukawa
Electric Co. Ltd., based in Tokyo, beneficially owns approximately 60.7% of
OCP's outstanding capital stock. Details are included in the Company news
release. Schott Increases Stake in U.L.M Photonics and "Restructures" Schott
OptovanceOctober 14, 2002...The Schott Group, which owns Schott Optovance, Inc. in Southbridge, Massachusetts
USA and holds considerable equity in U.L.M Photonics GmbH in Ulm, Germany, has
made recent announcements of interest to the compound semi community in regard
to those two entities. On the positive side, Schott is increasing its stake
in the university spin-off U.L.M. Photonics GmbH (Ulm, Germany) to 52 percent,
thereby acquiring majority ownership of the ULM university spinoff noted for
its VCSEL manufacturing. According to Dr. Karl-Peter Merz, Member of the Corporate
Management Committee of Schott Glas and Chairman of the Board of Directors of
Schott Optovance. “We are pursuing attractive opportunities to apply U.L.M.’s
leading VCSEL technology in applications inside, as well as outside, the telecom
and datacom markets.” On the negative side, due to the current market conditions,
Schott is restructuring Schott Optovance, Inc. which is focused on high-density,
fiber management components for parallel optical interconnects, as well as high-density
planar optical components and that arm of Schott will be either sold, spun-in...
or closed by the end of the year. Supply of products to its approximately 20
customers, most of them established leaders in optical equipment and subsystems,
will be assured during the restructuring. “We are facing the realities of
today’s telecommunications markets. Although Schott Optovance has developed
a unique and strong technology basis and became the leader in its respective
sector, we are not able to forecast when a sustained turnaround of the telecommunications
markets will take effect,” said Merz. Schott Corporation (Yonkers, NY),
whose base product is special glass, is the North American headquarters for
the Schott Group (Mainz, Germany). Schott has 16 divisions and subsidiaries
employing approximately 3,000 people in North America. The Schott Group employs
nearly 20,000 people worldwide and has sales of approximately $2 billion. More
details are included in the news
release. October 14, 2002...While there's no mention direct from Osram Opto yet, according to an interesting
Nikkei Asia article
last week, Osram Opto Semiconductors of Germany, which is noted for their HB-LED work, is also very much involved in blue spectrum laser development. Evidently, Osram Opto has increased the continuous
wave of its blue spectrum GaN lasers now to 143 hours. According to the report,
Osram Opto attributes this achievement to improvements in their growth of AlInGaN
structures on SiC substrates. "The high thermal conductivity of silicon-carbide
has been utilized to improve the thermal balance of the chip, and it also prevents
the chip from overheating during operation. The developers at the company were
able to bring in experience from high-end package technology in high-power laser
assemblies, which ensures optimum heat dissipation and efficient decoupling
of light." In so doing, Osram is reported to have dropped their operating
voltage from 16V to 8V and because of their lateral optical wave guides and
extremely smooth laser mirrors they've reduced the operating current to 96mA.
The article
contains many more technical details for those tracking blue spectrum laser
diode progress.
Fujitsu Labs' InP HEMT Scores 562 GHz MarkOctober 14, 2002...Speed is always the name of the compound semi game, and Fujitsu Labs, which
has been a pioneering leader in high speed devices, has reported recently, in
IEEE Electron
Device Letters (Vol. 23, No. 10), under the author name, Akira Endo and
his team at the Fjuitsu
Lab Optical and Microwave Device group that they reached a record 562 GHz
speed for their InP HEMT device that was created in collaboration with colleagues
at Osaka University and the Communications Research Laboratory in Tokyo. Their
article highlights how they fabbed the device, which included a 25nm gate, and
the layers were grown by MOCVD on a SI InP wafer using relatively low temperature
processing. The extrapolated ft was 562 GHz and fmax was 330 GHz, pinch off
voltage was –0.45 V, and the off-state breakdown voltage was below –1V. Target
long-range appellations for this especially fast device are for millimeter wave
and sub-millimeter wave applications which are always on defense department
drawing boards, and on the commercial side for next generation optical communications
above 160 Gb/s when and if the market demands require such high speed performance. Danish VCSEL Startup, Alight, Offers Better Way to Channel LightOctober 14, 2002...Once again, LightReading's UK Editor,
Pauline Rigby, does a great job covering the latest communications company to
offer something fresh for our compound semi community. She covers a startup
in Denmark called Alight Technologies A/S, a spinoff from the COM Research Center
of Denmark Technical University. Alight appears to be aimed at offering the
1310nm VCSEL makers a better way of channeling the light in their devices so
that their VCSELs can move into the higher-power laser market. Read all about
it in her article titled Startup
Boosts VCSEL Power, filed October 10th, which contains considerable
details which will be of interest to those designing and incorporating VCSEL
devices. And while we're on the subject of VCSEL technology... for those following
the CoreTek saga, while you're over at LightReading's site and focused on Pauline's
work, check out her in-depth coverage
of the Bookham Technology acquisition of Nortel's opto business... minus CoreTek,
of course, a topic we covered in our October 8th editorial, titled The
CoreTek Mystery Saga: Where's the IP? ADC Poised for RecoveryOctober 14, 2002...Remember ADC? They made their system integrator presence known to the compound
semi industry at the height of the boom, sponsoring events and courting smaller
suppliers. While noticeably absent from the current downturn scene, ADC Telecommunications of Minneapolis,
Minnesota USA appears to be positioning itself if and when things pick up. Note
their recent news release
citing their readiness, and leveraging a recent IDC research study. IDC provided
a heady testimonial on the company, with their analyst Amy Harris stating "Based
on our research, ADC appears to have the right products, extensive customer
base and strong international reach to recover quickly when carrier spending
resumes. Under Mr. Roscitt's leadership, ADC is well on the way to completing
its restructuring efforts, which means the company is poised to increase revenue
within the domestic and international broadband access space." Bigger/Faster Diamond Growth ReportedOctober 14, 2002...A recent Nature Magazine article
on CVD diamonds by Philip Ball caught our eye and caused speculation that maybe
wide bandgap diamond technology could be headed for a comeback. Those interested
are encouraged to read the full
article, which reports details of work done by Russell Hemley of the Geophysical
Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and colleagues who have
evidently developed a method for creating bigger diamonds faster. Their novel
growth method is aimed at helping overcome the limits of current growth methods
making them more economically viability as diamond windows for high-power lasers
or space-based infrared sensors. "Hemley and colleagues put together
two tricks to improve CVD films. They grow them on pure diamond to reduce flaws:
the carbon atoms line up with those on the existing surface. And they hasten
the growth of the film by increasing the pressure of the carbon-rich gas - usually
methane mixed with hydrogen - and adding to it a small amount of nitrogen gas,"
wrote Ball. The combined approach is said to increase the growth rate of diamond
films approximately 100 fold. U of Illinois Helping Solve HT Superconductor PuzzleOctober 14, 2002...The peculiar behavior of high-temperature superconductors has baffled scientists
for many years, keeping that especially promising technology from from reaching
its commercial potential. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
have reported,
that by imaging the copper-oxide plane in a cuprate superconductor for the first
time, that direct direct access to the surface of the superconductors, scientists
can begin manipulating its properties by changing what's under the surface.
The Illinois work essentially opens a new methodology for probing electrons
in the copper-oxide plane. The work was done by physics professor Ali Yazdani,
graduate student Shashank Misra, and colleagues who used a scanning tunneling
microscope to demonstrate that a single copper-oxide plane can form a stable
layer at the superconductor's surface. This plane behaves differently when exposed
at the surface than when buried inside the crystal, the researchers discovered,
offering additional insight into the behavior of high-temperature superconductors.
"High-temperature superconductors are layered compounds containing one or
more copper-oxide planes and other layers that act as charge reservoirs,"
said Professor Yazdani. "Like dopants in a semiconductor, these layers donate
charge carriers to the copper-oxide planes, making them conducting. The strong
electronic interactions in the copper-oxide planes are responsible for the material’s
unusual electronic properties. You could theorize that the other layers had
no effect on the measurement, but that flies in the face of our experiment.
From our results, it is clear that what you put at the surface makes a huge
difference in what you measure." Having direct access to the surface means
scientists can begin manipulating its properties by changing what's under the
surface. The Illinois work also opens a new methodology for probing electrons
in the copper-oxide plane. NEC's Compound Semi Site Helps DesignersOctober 14, 2002...NEC Compound Semiconductor Devices, Ltd. in Japan has announced the creation
of a free service to provide microwave device parameters to users in SP2-file
format, enabling direct input to simulators used for application circuit design.
This new service allows S parameters that were conventionally input by circuit
designers using the keyboard to be directly input to the circuit simulator.
This substantially reduces the time required for input and the possibility of
input errors, enabling efficient design of circuits using microwave devices.
The service is now available via the NEC CSD website (click
here to go directly there). The new service will provide 1,300 S parameters
(device characteristics provided as numerical coordinates) for 180 types of
microwave devices supplied by NEC and is said by the company to be the largest-scale
service of its kind in Japan. More details are in the NEC news
release. New Focus Introduces New GaAs and InGaAs DetectorsOctober 14, 2002...New Focus of San Jose, California USA has announced the addition of two new
detector lines: high-gain 80-MHz balanced receivers, and 3.5-GHz receivers for
datacom / telecom test and measurement. The new DC-coupled 3.5-GHz receivers
come standard with a multimode 62.5-micron fiber input and are available with
either a gallium-arsenide (GaAs) detector for wavelengths from 400-900 nanometers
or an indium-gallium-arsenide (InGaAs) detector for wavelengths from 900-1650
nanometers. They are well suited for time-domain characterizations of 2.5-Gbit/s
components and extinction-ratio measurements, as well as for frequency-domain
measurements. "Both these new receiver lines complement our current line
of leading photonic detectors," says Dr. Timothy Day, CTO and co-founder
of New Focus. "The development of these receivers demonstrates our continued
dedication to our strong portfolio of high-performance opto-electronic devices."
Considerable details are included in the Company news
release. Our news features are reported
by the CompoundSemi News staff writers.
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