Optoelectronics

Optoelectronics

Optoelectronic devices are electronics devices that emit, control or detect light. Applications like laser scanning and printing, telecommunications, and industrial material processing have traditionally relied on optoelectronic device technologies. More recently, LED (light-emitting diode) lighting has seen mass adoption. Optoelectronic devices such as lasers, photodetectors, micro-LEDs, and photonic-integrated-circuits (PICs) are the building blocks for new technologies in use more and more today such as augmented reality, 3D sensing, and LiDAR (light detection and ranging).

Innovative device architectures, new materials development, monolithic and heterogeneous integration of materials, larger wafer sizes, and single-wafer processing are required for these technologies to meet today’s application requirements. The ongoing development and evolution of 200 and 300mm production technologies deliver device and yield improvements as well as overall fab productivity gains—all of which translate into sustained performance and cost benefits for semiconductor manufacturers.

Applied Materials’ extensive product portfolio for the optoelectronics device segment includes dielectrics deposition, epitaxy, etch, metals deposition, chemical mechanical planarization (CMP), implant, atomic layer deposition (ALD) and inspection. New technologies like piezo-electric films, ALD dielectrics and damage-free etch are driving fundamental device performance improvements that are necessary to meet the application specifications for the latest devices.