Thin film lithium niobate (TFLN) material has potential in photonics and electro-optics to advance a variety of applications from optical data communications, autonomous vehicle navigation, signal processing, and quantum applications. Various efforts are currently progressing in manufacturing and use of the material. The Microelectronics Commons (Commons) Quantum Technology Technical Area Leads are hosting a TFLN workshop to better understand the landscape, efforts, and how best to collaborate with limited resources. This half day workshop will start with an introductory presentation by a TFLN researcher on the material, challenges, breakthrough, and a high-level manufacturing process. It will be followed by three panel discussions each kicked off by a presenter on materials and processes, use cases, scaled manufacturing capabilities, as well as other important aspects. The panel discussion will be presented with panel introductions and a few starting questions by the moderator follow by Q&A and discussions with the audience. The moderator(s) will conclude the workshop with short remarks and summary of action items and key takeaway.
1:00 PM – 1:45 PM:
High performance integrated photonics based on thin film lithium niobate (TFLN)
Marko Lončar, Brigadier General, Harvard University and Hyperlight Corporation (United States)
The last two decades have seen tremendous progress in the field of integrated photonics, and chip-scale photonic systems can now be found everywhere: from optical communications and sensing to machine vision and precision measurements. However, traditional integrated photonic platforms, based on e.g. silicon and compound semiconductors, are reaching their limits and cannot keep up with the demands for more speed, less energy consumption, and advanced functionality. High performance thin film lithium niobate photonic platform pioneered by my team can overcome these limitations. For example, our electro-optic modulators can power up high-speed optical communication systems, as well as enable realization of mm-wave and THz communication systems. Our frequency combs are important for environmental and biomedical monitoring, precision measurements and ranging. Finally, microwave-to-optical transducers, based on electro-optic photonic molecule / frequency shifter concept, can enable efficient and low noise interfaces between superconducting quantum computers, while TFLN photonic platform operating in visible is important for realization of multiplexed quantum repeaters and quantum internet.
Marko Lončar is Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard's John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and chair of Electrical Engineering area. Lončar received his Diploma from University of Belgrade (R. Serbia) in 1997, and PhD from Caltech in 2003 (with Axel Scherer), both in Electrical Engineering. After completing his postdoctoral studies at Harvard (with Federico Capasso), he joined Harvard faculty in 2006. Lončar is expert in nano-photonics and nanofabrication, and his group has done pioneering work in the field of quantum and nonlinear nano-photonics. He is co-founder of HyperLight Corporation (Cambridge, MA), VC backed startup commercializing lithium-niobate technology developed in his lab.
1:45 PM – 2:05 PM:
United States domestic lithium niobate supply chain and opportunities
Matt Whittaker, Gooch & Housego (United States)
Review of the current domestic supply of lithium niobate crystals: Sizes, Orientations, Dopants/Modifications. Overview will include composition uniformity, and available wafer specifications. Will also review current capacity, opportunities to increase capacity, increase boule sizes as may possibly be required to support the growing TFLN market.
Matt Whittaker received his M.S. from Case Western Reserve University in 2000 as a graduate research assistant studying growth of rare-earth scintillators at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He then worked on lithium tantalate development at Sawyer Research and on relaxor ferroelectrics at Morgan Electroceramics before receiving his Ph.D. from Case in 2007. Matt is currently the Crystal Growth and Inertial Confined Fusion manager at G&H Ohio, he is responsible for research and production of LiNbO3, KDP, KD*P, TeO2, BBO, CdS, and CdSe.
2:05 PM – 2:40 PM:
Panel Discussion: Materials scaling and manufacturing requirements and challenges
Moderator:
To be determined
Panelists:
Matt Whittaker, Gooch & Housego (United States)
Dennis Prather, Phase Sensitive Innovations (United States)
Steve McKeown, Air Force Research Laboratory (United States)
Piyush Shah, Apex Microdevices (United States)
2:40 PM – 2:55 PM: Coffee Break
2:55 PM – 3:15 PM:
HyperLight’s Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) Platform:
Unlocking the Future of Integrated Photonics
Amirmahdi Honardoost, Hyperlight Corporation (United States)
Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) photonics has transformed from a research-focused material to a leading solution for next-generation applications in datacom, telecom, and high-performance sectors such as radio-over-fiber and test and measurement. Since its founding in 2018 in Cambridge, MA, USA, HyperLight Corporation has been at the forefront of industrializing TFLN technology, establishing itself as a leader in the field. Through its proprietary TFLN-on-insulator platform, HyperLight is driving the development of high-performance photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for a global customer base that offer cost-effective solutions to meet the growing demands of modern optical communications and emerging photonics markets. These advanced PICs provide high data transfer rates, low insertion loss, and are particularly suited for applications such as data center interconnects, metro networks, and long-haul transmission. Notably, HyperLight’s TFLN transmitter PICs enable unprecedented speed and energy efficiency, delivering up to 40% power savings when compared to traditional silicon photonics or InP-based solutions. This presentation will offer an introduction to the TFLN platform developed by HyperLight, showcasing its diverse applications, current technical status, and ongoing advancements that are shaping the future of integrated photonics.
Amirmahdi Honardoost received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Central Florida (UCF) in 2020. During his Ph.D. studies at UCF, he was a graduate research assistant at CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, working in Prof. Sasan Fathpour's IPES group. His research focused on the design, fabrication, and characterization of photonic integrated circuits, particularly thin-film lithium niobate devices. In 2019, he was a photonics research intern at imec USA. Following his Ph.D., Dr. Honardoost joined Prof. Ming Wu's IPL group at the University of California, Berkeley, as a postdoctoral scholar, where he developed and demonstrated low-loss, large-scale MEMS-based silicon photonic optical switches. Since April 2022, Dr. Honardoost has been with HyperLight, a venture-backed company specializing in photonic integrated circuits based on its proprietary production-grade thin-film lithium niobate platform. At HyperLight, he contributes to the development of advanced photonics solutions for optical communications, industrial applications, and emerging markets.
3:15 PM – 3:50 PM:
Panel Discussion: Integration and device design challenges and requirements
Moderator:
To be determined
Panelists:
Amirmahdi Honardoost , Hyperlight (United States)
Paul Juodawlkis, MIT Lincoln Laboratory (United States)
Martin Fejer, Stanford University (United States)
Stefan Preble, Rochester Institute of Technology (United States)
Dashiell Vitullo, Army Research Laboratory (United States)
Dirk Englund, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (United States)
3:50 PM – 4:05 PM: Coffee Break
4:05 PM – 4:25 PM:
Applications of TFLN in clocks, quantum sensing, and quantum networks
Kartik Srinivasan, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Joint Quantum Institute (United States)
Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) provides functionalities based on the second-order nonlinearity and the Pockels effect that can service a wide range of photonics applications across. In this talk, I will review some ways in which TFLN devices, in particular electro-optic frequency combs and sum- and difference-frequency generation modules, can provide significant benefit to future generations of deployable optical clocks, quantum sensors, and quantum networking components.
Kartik Srinivasan is a Fellow of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a Fellow of the NIST/University of Maryland Joint Quantum Institute, and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. He received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology before joining NIST in 2007. Kartik has published research on topics such as integrated quantum photonics, nonlinear nano-photonics, nanoscale electro-optomechanical transducers, and photonic crystals.
4:25 PM – 5:00 PM:
Panel Discussion: Photonics applications requirements
Moderator:
To be determined
Panelists:
Kartik Srinivasan, National Institute of Standards and Technology (United States)
Kang Tan, IonQ (United States)
Samuel Knarr, L3Harris (United States)
Nicholas Usechak, Air Force Research Laboratory (United States)
This workshop is part of the Quantum Information Science, Sensing, and Computation XVII conference.
Event Details
FORMAT: Keynote and invited presentations followed by panel discussions followed by audience Q&A.MENU: Coffee, decaf, and tea will be available in the exhibition area.
SETUP: Classroom and theater style seating. .