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To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (36682)	4/8/2002 7:07:17 AM
From: Johnny Canuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67992

A compound interest in fiber optics A handful of firms exploring the opportunities of indium phosphide, a material that is likely to revolutionize the communications industry. By Om Malik April 5, 2002 Loi Nguyen first learned of the obscure material indium phosphide (InP) while attending a lecture on solid-state materials 15 years ago. At the time, he was an undergraduate studying electrical engineering at Cornell University. Now Mr. Nguyen is a leading researcher on InP, as well as the cofounder and CEO of Inphi, an optical-components company in Westlake Village, California. It's one of a handful of firms exploring the technological and business opportunities of a material that is likely to revolutionize the communications industry, much as silicon revolutionized the computer industry. Using indium phosphide, Mr. Nguyen and fellow Inphi cofounders Gopal Raghavan and Tim Semones have developed a method of combining optical and electronic components in one integrated circuit, overcoming a barrier that many consider critical to the future of photonic circuitry. Indium phosphide's unique optical absorption and transmission properties and low power requirements make it an optimal material for next-generation photonic circuits. Though discovered in 1863, InP was pretty much ignored by the scientific community until the late '80s, when the aerospace industry took notice. TRW, a U.S. government defense contractor, started experimenting with the material. Not long after, InP-based components started appearing in avionics equipment. Then, during the frenetic optical-market bonanza of the late '90s, entrepreneurs started exploring the viability of using the compound for the much desired integration of optical and electrical components onto a single chip, a challenge that engineers have been working on for several years. Like gallium arsenide, a material widely used in cell phones and other communications devices, InP is a compound made of binary crystals produced by combining one element from the metallic Group III of the periodic table with an element from the nonmetallic Group V. It is made into slabs with diameters of 2, 3, or 4 inches, in much the same way other semiconductor materials are prepared. The slabs are then sliced into thin wafers and polished to be used as platforms on which the various materials that comprise the structures of lasers, detectors, and transistors are grown. The process is similar to growing circuits on silicon wafers. When a III-V compound is stimulated with relatively low levels of energy, it kicks off electrons, which in turn travel through the material. Because these compounds generate high-energy electrons, they are ideally suited for faster circuit-switching applications that form the foundation of next-generation networks. And InP can handle much higher data-transfer speeds than, say, gallium arsenide. It should come as no surprise then that other companies, like Cyoptics, Qusion Technologies, and Vitesse Semiconductor, are also looking to profit from InP's optical properties. What's so promising is that the material also makes possible the large-scale integration of components like lasers, detectors, passive waveguides, and electronics onto the same chip. That integration is key because it is expected to lower the cost of an optical system and, along with attractive economics, is a major reason many are convinced that the compound will usher in a new era in optical broadband communications. redherring.com