Changjiang Daily, June 6 - on June 4, the reporter of Changjiang Daily learned from Elite optoelectronics that the enterprise's 25G laser chip in 5G has passed the strict reliability test of international communication giants. It is the only national enterprise with independent intellectual property rights that has passed the test. This means that in the field of optical chip technology at the upstream of the optical communication industry, Wuhan has become a technical highland with medium and high-end optical chip R & D capability.
In the Elite optoelectronics photoelectric optical communication chip production workshop, the reporter of Changjiang Daily saw that the micro invisible chip was placed on the base. It is understood that after the chip is powered on, it will send out a high-frequency laser invisible to the naked eye to transmit the signal to the optical fiber.
Long Hao, general manager of Elite optoelectronics, introduced that in the process of optical communication transmission, the transmitting end converts the electrical signal into optical signal, which is transmitted to the receiving end through optical fiber, and then the optical signal is converted into electrical signal, which can be "read" by all intelligent devices. To realize the conversion between electricity and light is the optical chip.
"About four years ago, I don't know who first launched the 'assembly number', and several senior experts from all over the world met back to Han to start the cause of optical chip manufacturing." "If you don't do it yourself, you can't say when the light chip will be cut off," Long Hao said.
In China, the optical chip industry has been hovering at the low end. Some data show that the localization rate of optical chips with a speed of 2.5Gb/s and below exceeds 80%, and the localization rate of 10Gb / S is less than 30%, while optical chips with a speed of 25Gb / s and above are in a state of "neck" in the industry.
Several senior experts founded Yunling optoelectronics, agreed not to buy or rely on, independently developed the whole process, and aimed at medium and high-end optical chips of 25Gb / s and above.
"All our wafers are self-developed." Long Hao said that the first step of optical chip is epitaxial chip manufacturing, and its quality often affects the performance of optical chip. Only a few enterprises in a few countries can produce it commercially.
In Elite optoelectronics photoelectric "epitaxial material growth area", technicians have grown nano materials through thousands of R & D experiments to become the "muscle bottom" of optical chips. In this technology, grating preparation, lithography, etching, cleaning and testing are carried out. Finally, we have to go through the temperature test from - 40 degrees to 90 degrees, and finally form a palm sized wafer, which is densely arranged with more than 10000 25G optical communication chips.
In the past four years, Elite optoelectronics has gradually realized the whole process R & D and production capacity from laser chip design, epitaxial design and material growth, wafer manufacturing, chip testing and verification. At present, there are more than 300 sets of world advanced semiconductor manufacturing and testing equipment, a class 100 / class 1000 / class 10000 purification plant of 6000 square meters, and an annual output of 72 million optical communication chips.
"You don't have to buy 'seeds' but you can grow' crops' yourself. The advantages are becoming prominent." Xiong Wen, chairman of Elite optoelectronics, introduced that after the self-development of core materials, the "growth" time can be controlled within one week, which is 3 months faster than buying epitaxial wafers or wafers abroad, which greatly shortens the product iteration cycle. Elite optoelectronics successfully sent samples in a very short time, and a number of optical chip products fully met the test requirements of downstream communication giants.
（Changjiang Daily reporter Li Jia, correspondent Li Huijiang, zhe Anxin）