LIGHTWAVE PHOTONICS, INC. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 01b

Description

Low-cost and reliable plastic optical fibers (POFs) are rapidly gaining acceptance in advanced networking applications such as data center and building LAN wiring, video streaming for Internet-protocol television (IPTV), and for safety-critical functions from secure braking and suspension control in cars to flight control in avionics. Common polymers used to form the light medium in POFs show smallest attenuation for light in the green and green-yellow color spectrum, which means these lights travel the furthest in the POF cables. While bright InGaN LEDs are commercially available, there are considerable challenges in taking advantage of optical cavity effects to fabricate fast green LEDs, and hence, the only commercially available emitters for POF applications are bright-red LEDs at 650 nm with much larger attenuation.To address the above problem, Lightwave Photonics, Inc. (LPI), has recently developed a grown-epitaxial metal-mirror (GEMM) substrate, which in addition to significant improvements in manufacturing and device performance, enables the fabrication of ultra-fast hyper-emission green LEDs for advanced POF networks. The GEMM substrates will be used to fabricate high quality LED quantum well layers without the need to grow thick GaN buffer layers. This is crucial for realizing micro and nano-cavity ultra-fast InGaN green LEDs that can outperform currently available red LEDs for POF applications. In this SBIR program, Lightwave Photonics, Inc, is proposing to develop hyper-emission green light emitting diodes (LEDs) for application in low-cost and reliable plastic optical fiber (POF) networks. LPI’s innovative solution is based on the fabrication of green LEDs on its patented metal templates (GEMM) which are lattice matched to GaN, in order to take advantage of optical micro-cavity effects for enhancing the quantum efficiency and emission rate of green LEDs. Commercial Application and Other Benefits: The proposed ultra-fast green LEDs will provide higher performance, lower cost solutions for the last portion of broadband access networks known as “edge networks”, using plastic optical fiber (POF). Edge networks are required for reducing costs associated with providing coverage to large residential and business areas such as campuses, office high-rises, and hospitals. The POF networks are very suitable for this application because they are relatively simple and low-cost to install compared to glass-core fibers. Furthermore, since POFs does not emit electromagnetic radiation, they are inherently more secure than wireless networks and traditional Ethernet cable networks. More generally, high performance LEDs on metal substrates can substantially reduce the cost of solid state lighting technologies, resulting in faster adaption and wider application of energy saving and pollution-reducing products. LPI’s GaN on GEMM technology may also greatly improve the performance of other semiconductor devices such as high power transistors and switches, high sensitivity detectors, and high brightness photocathodes.