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Opto Taiwan By John Latta(August 16-19)
[9.1.2001 | ]
The WAVE Report went to Taipei for another conference - Opto Taiwan. A few gems are discussed below.
Applied Image Group
Applied Image Group is a private company that was originally spun out of the Donnelly Optics in Michigan, which developed optics for automobile applications. When Donnelly was in distress Applied Image Group bought them out. The company has 4 subsidiaries: Optics, Coatings, Imaging and Glasstec. The latter three subsidiaries are located in Rochester, NY. The Optics division has facilities in Tucson, Arizona, Suzhou, China and Taipei, Taiwan and specializes in optical and mechanical design, tight tolerance injection molding and system integration and assembly.
The WAVE Report spoke at length with Bob Kuo, Director, New Business Development, Optics Subsidiary. The focus was on plastics optics but went much farther. Bob has his Ph.D. from U of Rochester and was very knowledgeable about the optics business. His charter is to expand the business beyond just making lenses. Where should the Optics within the Applied Image Group go is the question he has a responsibility to answer? His response is that they must become an optics systems company with higher degrees of integration with packaging and electronics integration. The analogy he used is to become the Flextronics of optical systems. This was not puffery as Bob put into context their experience, current jobs and the role that the Asian markets play. Some of the points that Bob made include:
The problem in the optical component business, lenses included, is that it is being driven to commodity status. To survive, a company must look beyond the piece parts. However, optics as a technology has a number of considerations in order to capitalize on its role in a system.
Optics and the optical-mechanical technology has become widespread. The software design tools are so readily accessible that any BS graduate can claim to design a lens or its housing. In many cases this is just inadequate. Optics is an experience- based profession. There continues to be an element of art that has also to be acquired over many years in making optical systems. As an example, he cited optical and mechanical tolerancing as critical elements to include in designs so that they are producible. For example, others may copy some of our designs and attempt to include interlocks and other design elements, which are responsible for limiting tolerance impacts. This comes from experience and without it designs may be compromised significantly in practice. That is, they do not work the way the designs said.
There is no doubt that the capabilities in Asia will improve over time. However, today they just do not have the technical skill base to create quality producible designs. At Applied Image Group they have plastic lens fabrication in Tucson and have not yet gone to Taiwan or China sources because they consider the plastic component products inferior.
Quality in optics begins at the start of the project. This includes the optical design, mechanical design, the plastic materials for the lenses, the tolerancing, tooling, fabrication and testing. A strength of Applied Image Group is that their business includes all of this, in part, based on their experience in the automotive business. For example, the injection molding facility is in a clean room - one of the few in the industry. Cost control is not only about the piece parts but supply chain management.
We then asked Bob about the trends toward optical and mechanical integration. The illustration we used was single piece plastics, which have an embedded lens element. Bob sees this as a trend and went beyond it. The market is moving to optical subassemblies.
Applied Image Group is seeing a whole new class of electro-optics integration applications of which scanning and imaging are two. Many cell phone designs are now including cameras in them. Personal scanners are another application illustration. Mobile devices, in general, are changing the level of optics integration in CE.
Applied Image Group has been seen as an acquisition target but has steadfastly refused offers. This has been happening in the industry with devastating results. For example, a key competitor, Opcore, was bought by Corning. After ingestion they found it was not generating the income/profits expected and they shut the operation down. Applied Image Group acquired some of the talent and equipment. A similar situation occurred with OCLI and JDS Uniphase when in May of 2001, JDS announced that as part of their Global Realignment Program, OCLI would consolidate its operations. They predicted that the consolidation would eventually result in the closure of OCLI's Hillend, Scotland facility.
The strategy, based in part on the Flextronics model but for optical subsystems, is to remain independent and supply a broad base of customers and requirements. They cannot favor any one client or move up the integration chain, such as doing a digital camera, as this would threaten their business model. When asked - what does this mean in terms of other technology integration? The example we cited was flex circuits. Would Applied Image Group do this - no. They are also developing relations with these suppliers so that they can subcontract this part of the assembly.
AXT
The conversation was with Dan Gechtman, VP for Sales and Marketing, LED Technologies. The booth was touting "Super Bright LEDs." The strength of AXT is in non-red LEDs and they range from 445 to 535 nm. The point that Dan made was that the local, Taiwanese LCD companies, are touting high brightness low cost LEDs and sacrificing lifetime. Non-red device prices range from 8¢ to 20¢. Their products range from the >15¢ to 20¢ range. We then got into an extended discussion on reliability of LEDs. The industry benchmark is HTOL - High Temperature Output Lifetime. A common measure is that when the output falls below 50% of the original output the LED has reached EOF. Tests are typically run at 55 - 30, or 55 degrees ambient temperature and 30ma of drive current. These are considered stress conditions. Dan showed a presentation of recent very interesting results on HTOL. He had HTOL 55 - 30 tests over time - in some cases to 2,000 hours of both AXT and competitors products. NCHA is considered a large company here in Taiwan, for example. What the curves showed was dramatic - nearly all the Taiwanese companies products slid down sharply over time compared to AXT. As we discussed this, just because an LED dies under these tests at 500 hours, it does not mean this is the life expectancy in use. The reason being - few if any applications will run at these elevated temperature and current conditions.
The important point to our discussion is that high brightness is an important metric today for LEDs. Several booths were touting new applications for such LEDs, including traffic lights. These high brightness applications frequently expect long life and this may not be the case. To date, with the exception of the large volume LED buyers most buyers have not been focused on the lifetime tradeoffs.
emcore
EMCORE Corporation develops compound semiconductor solutions for the broadband and wireless communications and solid state lighting markets. Specifically, their solutions include optical devices for high-speed data, solar cells for satellite communications, position and motion sensing electronics, TurboDisc tools for GaAs, AlGaAs, InP, InGaAsP, GaN, InGaN, AlGaN, and SiC epitaxial materials and electronic materials for high bandwidth communications systems.
We spoke with Brian Gibson, Business Development Director, who is at the headquarters in Albuquerque. Points made include.
VCSEL at the wafer scale integration, remains embryonic and just beginning.
Most of the packages are based on the old TO package and thus the VCSEL is a discrete component.
emcore has recently begun shipping VCSEL arrays on wafers that customers can bump for their own mounting.
One of the key reasons for such an array, 1 X 4, 4 VCSELs in a linear array, is to lower the cost of getting to 10Gb/s. This is a "cheap" way to parallel the optics to create a single on-GaAs solution for high bandwidth.
In order to accomplish the electrical interface the VCSEL has pads outside the laser chamber. These are where the bumps are placed. The chip is flipped to another chip which has the electronics drive for the laser. The bumps can actually provide the displacement between the cavity and chip below and thus provide room for the mechanical fiber interface to the output of the cavity.
Brian stated that how this is done, and the techniques used, are the purview of the buyer. emcore typically, at the wafer lever, only positions the laser and the customer considers it proprietary how they use their chips to build a total package.
The typical pricing for such an array of lasers (4) is $30 and in million unit quantities he expects the price to go to $15. Even if one takes the liberty of assuming a 1 X 2 array is 1/2 this puts the cost at $7. Further, it is not clear that the coherent optical mouse laser placement requirements will allow the die are to be reduced by a factor of two over a 1 X 4 linear design.
The business model at emcore was interesting.
The materials technology is GaAs and the line widths are not anywhere close to that used in current silicon state-of-the-art, currently .13 micron. The reason being that the wavelength of the laser sets the dimension of the cavity. Further the pads for bumping are quite simple and actually larger that the diameter of the cavity.
emcore is both an IP and semiconductor fab. This is consistent with many of the component companies in the optical business. They have their own fab - no such merchant fab house exists in the micro-optical component business. Although Brian stated he eventually expect the Taiwan merchant fabs to do such implementations.
Process technology for GaAs is actually old and dates back to the early days of the semiconductor industry. Brian made the comment that they buy the old process technology equipment from Intel in Albuquerque and find this perfectly acceptable for emcore's needs.
The cost to create a mask is only $10k.
Their value add in the VCSEL business is: Process technology in GaAs for optical components; and IP for the cavity design.
Optoelectronic Technology Road Maps From Japan
The optoelectronics industry in Japan is much more mature and well developed than in Taiwan. The leading organization is called "Optoelectronics Industry and Technology Development Association." They had a booth. On the tabletop were three single sheet descriptions of optoelectronics roadmaps. Similar in type as those done by the semiconductor association but not nearly so detailed. The topics were: Optical Communications, Electronic Display, Optical Storage, Information Interface and Measurement and Sensing. These have the typical "big picture" Japanese view of the world such as reaching a "user-friendly Multimedia Society" by 2015. However, the technical details of what and when are most interesting. These sheets indicate that the association in Japan has been thinking about the long-term implications and applications of optics. High points include the following:
Optical Communications
2005 - 10Tb/s Long Haul, 10GB/s User Ethernet
Optical Storage
2005 - >100Gb/sq. in recording density, 100 - 250 Mb/s data rate - 5 - 10 ms seek time
Electronic Display
2007 - Paper like Sheet Display, 2mm thick with 10hour batter life
Information Science
2005 - Large Scale Network 100GB/s - 5M Pixel HDTV displays with 4 hours of storage
Measurement and Science
2005 - Environmental Sensing; Sensory sensing including Olfaction
The association also puts on its own trade show in Japan. The next one is InterOpto '02 from July 16 - 19, 2002 in Tokyo. It occupies 3 halls of the Makuhari Messe. Estimated amount of exhibit space - 30,000 sq.m.
http://www.pida.org.tw/show/OptoInfo.htm http://www.appliedimage.com http://www.emcore.com http://www.axt.com
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