After more than 12 months of technical breakthroughs and dozens of rounds of exploration by the R&D team, SDHY has finally mastered the 8-inch lithium niobate crystal growth technology. Assist in the preparation of large-sized lithium niobate thin films, promote the development of optoelectronic integrated devices, and achieve a full chain breakthrough in China's new generation information industry.
Lithium niobate crystal materials, due to their excellent electro-optic, acoustooptic, and nonlinear optical effects, are widely recognized as the core materials of key technologies in the new generation of information industry with the gradual development of new material properties and the emergence of new applications.
Not long ago, the SDHY research team successfully grown 8-inch (200 mm) diameter X-axis lithium niobate single crystals using the pull-up method. This is another important breakthrough in lithium niobate crystal growth technology after the team broke through the 8-inch lithium niobate crystal growth technology in Z-axis, 128Y and other directions for acoustic chips in 2021.
In recent years, integrated optoelectronic devices based on lithium niobate single crystal thin films have become a research hotspot and a key field of development internationally, as they can achieve high-speed optical modulation with a single pass bandwidth of over 100 G. Lithium niobate is the gatekeeper of the entire optical communication world, and for optical communication, lithium niobate holds the same position as silicon in the semiconductor industry. The international scientific research community has predicted that it has entered the era of "lithium niobate valley".
The mainstream microfabrication process for integrating optoelectronic devices is the 8-inch semiconductor production line. Therefore, 8-inch X-axis lithium niobate crystals are highly valued as the urgently needed basic material for the new generation of information technology integrated optoelectronic chips. Previously, there were only 3-inch and 4-inch X-axis lithium niobate crystal products in the Chinese market. Japanese companies announced last year that they had achieved small-scale trial production of 8-inch X-axis lithium niobate. So the 8-inch X-axis lithium niobate crystal has become a key foundational material that limits the development of China's new generation of information technology.
SDHY has a national level "Optoelectronic Functional Crystal" laboratory, which has been conducting research on various high-quality and large-sized lithium niobate crystal growth technologies and devices since 2017. With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation, the Provincial Natural Science Foundation's major basic research projects, and the school's talent fund, SDHY has successively broken through the 8-inch Z-axis and 128Y-axis lithium niobate crystal growth technology, achieving the industrial production of 8-inch lithium niobate crystals.
The successful development of 8-inch X-axis lithium niobate crystal growth technology marks a breakthrough in the bottleneck technology of China's new generation of key information technology basic materials.