The Ou Xin team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology and the Tobias Kippenberg team of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, have successfully developed a new type of "optical silicon" chip, that is, lithium tantalate integrated optical chip, opening a new chapter in optical chip technology. Their newly developed "optical silicon" chip - lithium tantalate integrated optical chip, with its outstanding performance, such as low latency, high bandwidth, low power consumption, etc., has painted a bright picture for the future of optical chip technology.

This groundbreaking research achievement was made public on May 8th in the journal Nature. It not only demonstrates the enormous potential of lithium tantalate materials in the field of optoelectronic chips, but also points out a practical and feasible technological path for the production of next-generation optoelectronic integrated chips.

Lithium tantalate, an inorganic crystalline material, has become the core of this study due to its excellent piezoelectric, ferroelectric, optoelectronic, and nonlinear optical properties. The R&D team cleverly carved the optical waveguide onto a silicon-based lithium tantalate heterojunction wafer composed of silicon dioxide lithium tantalate, which is similar to the manufacturing process of traditional electronic chips.

The key lies in the precise thickness of lithium tantalate single crystal film and the quality of the interface between the film and silicon dioxide. The Ouxin team has successfully created high-quality silicon based lithium tantalate single crystal heterojunction wafers using the "Universal Ion Knife" heterojunction integration technology, and significantly improved the preparation efficiency.

Even more exciting is that the technological breakthrough of the Ouxin team has reduced the optical loss of the device to 5.6 dB/m, which is lower than the lowest loss value reported by other teams for wafer grade lithium niobate waveguides. The development of micro and nano processing technology for ultra-low loss lithium tantalate photonic devices provides solid technical support for the large-scale production of optical chips. Currently, Professor Ou Xin and his team have successfully completed the preparation of eight inch wafers.

Since the emergence of chip technology, the global chip industry has gone through multiple technological revolutions, leaps in chip performance, and expansion of application areas, making the improvement of chip performance and the control of manufacturing costs a major challenge faced by the industry. In this context, the emergence of new integrated optoelectronic technologies such as lithium niobate photonics and silicon photonics, as well as new semiconductor materials such as lithium niobate and lithium tantalate, has injected new vitality into the development of fields such as optical communication, optical computing, and optical storage.

Faust Technology is deeply involved in the field of power devices, providing customers with power devices such as IGBT and IPM modules, as well as MCU and touch chips. It is an electronic component supplier and solution provider with core technology.