Lithium tantalate photonic integrated circuits for volume manufacturing

High-cost and limited wafer size hinder the industrial use of lithium niobate (LiNbO3)-based electro-optical photonic integrated circuits (PICs). This paper reports low-loss PICs made of lithium tantalate (LiTaO3), a commercially viable material for 5G filters, exhibiting comparable or superior properties to LiNbO3. Using deep ultraviolet (DUV) stepper-based manufacturing, low-loss (5.6 dB m⁻¹) PICs were created, demonstrating a LiTaO3 Mach–Zehnder modulator with a 1.9 V cm half-wave voltage–length product and up to 40 GHz electro-optic bandwidth. LiTaO3's lower birefringence enables high-density circuits and broadband operation, and the platform supports soliton microcomb generation, paving the way for scalable, low-cost, high-volume electro-optical PICs.

Chengli Wang, Zihan Li, Johann Riemensberger, Grigory Lihachev, Mikhail Churaev, Wil Kao, Xinru Ji, Junyin Zhang, Terence Blesin, Alisa Davydova, Yang Chen, Kai Huang, Xi Wang, Xin Ou, Tobias J. Kippenberg