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Lithium tantalate photonic integrated circuits for volume manufacturing
Open accessAbstract
Abstract Electro-optical photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on lithium niobate (LiNbO 3 ) have demonstrated the vast capabilities of materials with a high Pockels coefficient 1,2 . They enable linear and high-speed modulators operating at complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor voltage levels 3 to be used in applications including data-centre communications 4 , high-performance computing and photonic accelerators for AI 5 . However, industrial use of this technology is hindered by the high cost per wafer and the limited wafer size. The high cost results from the lack of existing high-volume applications in other domains of the sort that accelerated the adoption of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) photonics, which was driven by vast investment in microelectronics. Here we report low-loss PICs made of lithium tantalate (LiTaO 3 ), a material that has already been adopted commercially for 5G radiofrequency filters 6 and therefore enables scalable manufacturing at low cost, and it has equal, and in some cases superior, properties to LiNbO 3 . We show that LiTaO 3 can be etched to create low-loss (5.6 dB m −1 ) PICs using a deep ultraviolet (DUV) stepper-based manufacturing process 7 . We demonstrate a LiTaO 3 Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) with a half-wave voltage–length product of 1.9 V cm and an electro-optic bandwidth of up to 40 GHz. In comparison with LiNbO 3 , LiTaO 3 exhibits a much lower birefringence, enabling high-density circuits and broadband operation over all telecommunication bands. Moreover, the platform supports the generation of soliton microcombs. Our work paves the way for the scalable manufacture of low-cost and large-volume next-generation electro-optical PICs.
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“Current trends in the field of photonics regarding the transition from bulk crystalbased devices to photonic integrated circuits (PICs), and, more specifically, to nonlinear integrated photonics, propel the utilisation of thin films based on stoichiometric complex oxides (such as lithium niobate, lithium tantalate, and barium titanate) since they simultaneously promise both ultrafast light control”
From Metal Oxide Thin Films for Advanced Photonic Applications (2026) · cites this paper as [165]
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Deep learning with coherent nanophotonic circuits
Shen, Y., Harris, N. C., Skirlo, S., Prabhu, M., Baehr-Jones, T., Hochberg, M., Sun, X., Zhao, S., Larochelle, H., Englund, D., et al. (2017) · Nature Photonics · doi:10.1038/nphoton.2017.93 · Cited by 3,340
Integrated lithium niobate electro-optic modulators operating at CMOS-compatible voltages
Wang, C., Zhang, M., Chen, X., Bertrand, M., Shams-Ansari, A., Chandrasekhar, S., Winzer, P., & Lončar, M. (2018) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0551-y · Cited by 2,593
Self-citationTemporal solitons in optical microresonators
Herr, T., Brasch, V., Jost, J. D., Wang, C. Y., Kondratiev, N. M., Gorodetsky, M. L., & Kippenberg, T. J. (2013) · Nature Photonics · doi:10.1038/nphoton.2013.343 · Cited by 2,135
Self-citationDissipative Kerr solitons in optical microresonators
Kippenberg, T. J., Gaeta, A. L., Lipson, M. F., & Gorodetsky, M. L. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aan8083 · Cited by 1,831
Self-citationIntegrated photonics on thin-film lithium niobate
Zhu, D., Shao, L., Yu, M., Cheng, R., Desiatov, B., Xin, C. J., Hu, Y., Holzgrafe, J., Ghosh, S., Shams-Ansari, A., et al. (2021) · Advances in Optics and Photonics · doi:10.1364/aop.411024 · Cited by 1,516
Thomson, D., Zilkie, A., Bowers, J. E., Komljenovic, T., Reed, G. T., Vivien, L., Marris-Morini, D., Cassan, E., Virot, L., Fédéli, J.-M., et al. (2016) · Journal of Optics · doi:10.1088/2040-8978/18/7/073003 · Cited by 1,363
He, M., Xu, M., Ren, Y., Jian, J., Ruan, Z., Xu, Y., Gao, S., Sun, S., Wen, X., Zhou, L., et al. (2019) · Nature Photonics · doi:10.1038/s41566-019-0378-6 · Cited by 1,204
Broadband electro-optic frequency comb generation in a lithium niobate microring resonator
Zhang, M., Buscaino, B., Wang, C., Shams-Ansari, A., Reimer, C., Zhu, R., Kahn, J. M., & Lončar, M. (2019) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1008-7 · Cited by 980
Self-citationLithium niobate photonics: Unlocking the electromagnetic spectrum
Boes, A., Chang, L., Langrock, C., Yu, M., Zhang, M., Lin, Q., Lončar, M., Fejer, M. M., Bowers, J. E., & Mitchell, A. (2023) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.abj4396 · Cited by 671
Perspective on the future of silicon photonics and electronics
Margalit, N., Xiang, C., Bowers, S. M., Bjorlin, A., Blum, R., & Bowers, J. E. (2021) · Applied Physics Letters · doi:10.1063/5.0050117 · Cited by 641
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Wang, J., Chen, P., Dai, D. & Liu, L. Polarization coupling of X-cut thin film lithium niobate based waveguides. IEEE Photonics J.12, 2200310 (2020).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Ultrabroadband thin-film lithium tantalate modulator for high-speed communications
Wang, C., Fang, D., Zhang, J., Kotz, A., Lihachev, G., Churaev, M., Li, Z., Schwarzenberger, A., Ou, X., Koos, C. G., et al. (2024) · Optica · doi:10.1364/optica.537730 · Cited by 85
Self-citationUltrabroadband integrated electro-optic frequency comb in lithium tantalate
Zhang, J., Wang, C., Denney, C., Riemensberger, J., Lihachev, G., Hu, J., Kao, W., Blésin, T., Kuznetsov, N., Li, Z., et al. (2025) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08354-4 · Cited by 79
Self-citationYi, J., Guo, C., Ruan, Z., Chen, G., Wei, H., Lu, L., Gong, S., Pan, X., Shen, X., Guan, X., et al. (2024) · Light Science & Applications · doi:10.1038/s41377-024-01506-1 · Cited by 58
DC-stable electro-optic modulators using thin-film lithium tantalate
Powell, K. B., Li, X., Assumpção, D., Magalhaes, L. S., Sinclair, N. E., & Lončar, M. (2024) · Optics Express · doi:10.1364/oe.538870 · Cited by 59
Integrated structured light manipulation
Wang, J., Li, K., & Quan, Z. (2024) · Photonics Insights · doi:10.3788/pi.2024.r05 · Cited by 53
Metadata
- Authors
- Wang, C., Li, Z., Riemensberger, J., Lihachev, G., Churaev, M., Kao, W., Ji, X., Zhang, J., Blesin, T., Davydova, A., Chen, Y., Huang, K., Wang, X., Ou, X., & Kippenberg, T. J.
- Affiliations
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Ou, Xin
- Kippenberg, Tobias J.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2024-05-08
- Volume
- 629
- Issue
- 8013
- Pages
- 784-790
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- PMC
- PMC11111398
- OpenAlex
- W4396732481
- Cited by
- 248
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 106 · 2025: 105 · 2024: 35
- FWCI
- 39.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Infoscience (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
- Funders
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (201923)
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (2019-23, 62293521)
- China Scholarship Council
- HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme
- Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- H2020 European Research Council (835329)
- HORIZON EUROPE European Innovation Council (101113260)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Photonic and Optical Devices
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Optical and Acousto-Optic Technologies
- Keywords
- lithium tantalate, photonic integrated circuits, electro-optic modulator, Mach-Zehnder modulator, low-loss waveguides, high-volume manufacturing, soliton microcombs, birefringence, electro-optic bandwidth, lithium niobate comparison, telecom band
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