Asking for something that has never been done is merely asking a rhetorical question, isn't it? This factory will be the first-ever to produce photonic chips, which while similar to semiconductor chips, are more closely related to the chips being produced by Bookham, Kymata, etc. These photonic chips, produced using Lumenon's PHASIC process, are manufactured using many of the standard techniques, i.e., clean room, spin-coating, UV photolithography, 6" silicon wafer, etc., but they are much simpler to produce since it requires only one coat of sol-gel and much lower temperatures to convert the sol-gel to its final glass-polymer state. Yields should be high since the process is simplified.
The only people that might have a clue as to the actual yields would be Lumenon's scientists, and a few others in the industry that have done some work with sol-gel waveguides. However, I don't think the yield that I used is totally unreasonable. In any event, since the chip cost is so reasonable (most of the final cost will be because of overhead and packaging), a lower yield will not break the company. They will just crank out more to meet the needs, regardless of the actual yield.
As for how smooth the transition, and subsequent production of chips, will be I can only say that I can not predict the future, or I wouldn't be writing this. However, Lumenon only opened their pilot plant last July. To be where they are now is a sign that they managed whatever problems that arose with dispatch. It is entirely possible that there will be snags, just as it is possible that any problems will be minor and easily overcome. To drag SDL's problems into this picture just doesn't make sense. You want to compare pineapples with carrots. |
