Wafer meets laser

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IQE, the Cardiff supplier of semiconductor wafer products, has become a member of a €3.5m (£2.74m)European programme to develop high-value photonic components for broadband and local area networks.

IQE

, the

Cardiff

supplier of semiconductor wafer products, has become a member of a €3.5m (£2.74m) European programme to develop high-value photonic components for broadband and local area networks.

Demand for media-rich content and high-definition video services is increasing consumer bandwidth requirements by over 30 per cent per annum which, in turn, is expected to increase the demand for optical components by more than 12 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) according to industry forecasts.

The central objective of the Vertically Integrated Systems for Information Transfer (VISIT) programme is to develop and test high-speed vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, and edge-emitting lasers that have a completely novel design and/or largely improved functionality compared with current technology.

Other members of the VISIT programme are Intel (Ireland), VI Systems (Germany), Chalmers Tekniska (Sweden), The University of Cambridge, University College, Cork (Ireland) and the Russian Academy of Sciences.