La Luce Cristallina says the beta version of its 200-mm (8-inch) barium titanate (BaTiO₃) wafer is now available for customer evaluation, targeting advanced electro-optic modulators for telecommunications and data communications. The company is positioning the wafer as an enabling material for ultra-low-voltage operation and co-packaged optics architectures aimed at the bandwidth and power requirements associated with AI-scale data center infrastructure.
La Luce Cristallina’s announcement centers on a 200-mm BaTiO₃ wafer, with the company also referencing a 50-mm (2-inch) BaTiO₃ wafer that it plans to exhibit publicly. According to the company, its BaTiO₃ platform can be integrated “end-to-end” into standard CMOS silicon manufacturing processes, with the stated goal of adoption without fab retooling. For engineers evaluating modulator platforms, the technical claim doing most of the work here is BaTiO₃’s Pockels coefficient, which La Luce Cristallina says can reach up to approximately 1,300 pm/V in bulk single crystal material.
In silicon photonics architectures, electro-optic materials with a high Pockels coefficient are commonly associated with lower drive voltage requirements for modulation, which can translate into lower electrical power at a given modulation target. That’s why the company is tying this wafer release to co-packaged optics, where the power and thermal budget near switching silicon is tight and where component integration constraints tend to drive manufacturing and packaging decisions.
La Luce Cristallina also points to BaTiO₃ use beyond data communications, saying it is emerging as an electro-optic material for low-loss, high-speed switching in quantum optical circuits, and it specifically mentions PsiQuantum as leveraging BaTiO₃ “to build quantum supercomputers.” The company says it will exhibit its 200-mm (8-inch) and 50-mm (2-inch) BaTiO₃ wafers at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference, March 17–19, at the Los Angeles Convention Center (booth 5507, West Hall).
“With this beta version, current and prospective customers can test-drive our solution’s capabilities and unlock the full potential of barium titanate for powering multiple generations of electro-optic innovation across diverse use cases,” said Agham Posadas, CTO and Co-Founder, La Luce Cristallina.
Source: La Luce Cristallina
