“Etched not Cleaved”: The essential difference between BinOptics' design philosophy and that of our competitors is the use of etched facets. Our proprietary technology, invented by scientists at Cornell University, and fully developed for commercial devices by BinOptics, has significant implications for reproducibility, flexibility, low cost, monolithic integration, performance, and reliability. What does this mean for our customers?

• Reproducibility and Flexibility: EFT allows facets to be defined through high precision photolithography rather than imprecise, hit-or-miss, mechanical cleaving. The result is unprecedented uniformity and yield, as well as the capability to build structures that are impossible to realize with conventional techniques. EFT allows devices to be optimally located on the chip. It is not dependent on the crystallographic plane of the wafer, so unique anti-reflection geometries can be used in place of coatings. EFT is effective in most semiconductor materials including InP, GaAs, and GaN. (GaN being the semiconductor of choice for blue lasers.)
  
  
• Low Cost: The facet cleaving operation is often one of the most costly and low yielding operations in the factories of our competitors. EFT eliminates this cost. BinOptics' lasers are fully fabricated and automatically tested on the wafer before separation into individual chips. As a result, BinOptics is able to evaluate all the lasers on the wafer in a single, automated, high throughput test operation in addition to dramatically reducing the cost of chip handling. Wafer-scale testing allows BinOptics to sell fully characterized wafers to our high volume customers.
  
  
• Monolithic Integration: The BinOptics' technology platform enables monolithic integration of numerous optical functions onto a single chip in a revolutionary and flexible manner. Complex functions can be readily designed and realized at reasonable cost because of the intrinsically high yield of the process. Monolithic integration is made possible by EFT combined with the ability to create high performance wavelength stabilized devices without the need for epitaxial regrowth. Optical coupling is achieved through appropriate placement of devices on the chip, reducing performance compromises and interactions between functions. Reflections are controlled through appropriate geometrical design made possible because the facets are not required to lie on a crystallographic plane. Both active and passive functions can be fully integrated on the InP wafer, including Fabry-Perot and ring lasers, detectors, electro-absorption modulators, amplifiers, passive waveguides, and combiners.
  
  
• Performance and Reliability: Devices made using EFT are exceptionally robust with respect to temperature and humidity because there are no exposed semiconductor surfaces to degrade. They are inherently reliable because of the process used to fabricate them. A common failure mode in our competitors' semiconductor laser products originates from the disruption caused by repeated regrowth during device fabrication. Another source of defects and performance variability is the facet cleaving operation and subsequent coating operations. EFT eliminates both these sources of failure by design. Extensive accelerated testing has shown excellent results in both hermetic and non-hermetic environments.