SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Nova Crystals, Inc., a developer and manufacturer of high-end laser components for fiber-optic data/telecommunications applications, will announce at OFC 2001 (Booth #856) that it has achieved an important technological milestone by proving a 1310nm vertical cavity surface emitting laser design (VCSEL) for 10Gb/s operation. VCSELs are lasers that can be fabricated and packaged much more economically than the more standard edge emitting lasers widely used in telecommunications systems - but were previously limited to speeds of 2.5 Gb/s. Preliminary devices fabricated at Nova Crystals deliver 7 mW of power, exhibiting single spatial mode and a single polarization state output. Thus, Nova Crystals' VCSELs show the potential to become the first practical 10 Gb/s VCSEL source for metro, access and LAN applications, and offers these markets a high bandwidth, lower cost alternative to the legacy Fabry-Perot, edge emitting laser diodes.

"Nova Crystal's proprietary VCSEL technology is advantageous in many ways; for example, it allows numerous functional components, such as modulators and power amplifiers, to be integrated monolithically on a single chip," notes Yu-Hwa Lo, Ph.D., Nova Crystals' Chief Technical Officer. "As we move towards manufacturing the device, we will continue to refine its operating characteristics, such as its spectral linewidth, temperature sensitivity, and extinction ratio."

http://www.novacrystals.com