Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, HHI Orders AIXTRON MOCVD Tool for InP Photonics

AIXTRON AG announced that in the fourth quarter the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI), Berlin, Germany, ordered one AIX 2600G3 IC MOCVD system for the multi-wafer growth of indium phosphide (InP) based optoelectronic devices. The MOCVD tool will be delivered in a 8×4 inch wafer configuration and be shipped in the third quarter of 2009. The tool will be an essential contribution to further developing the capabilities of the institute’s Photonic Components department.

“The strong growth of phase dependent information transmission, together with the demand for WDM optochip solutions at reasonable costs, creates a huge need for photonic integrated circuits,” Norbert Grote, department head of the photonic component department, said. “We believe that soon more than 50% of HHI’s wafer area will be some kind of integrated solution. We are confident that the ordered AIX 2600G3 IC system will upgrade our MOCVD capabilities to a level sufficient for many years to come.”

“We have been doing InP photonics development for more than two decades,” Harald Kuenzel, leader of HHI’s epitaxy group, added. “Now our program has reached the point where we need to expand our epi capacity and upgrade to the latest technology in terms of area uniformity and multi-wafer capability. Our industrial customers are more and more keen on seeing R&D device developments to be compliant with state-of-the art production tools. After reviewing all available options we will once again acquire the best MOCVD tool suited for our needs from AIXTRON. It has been our experience that these systems provide excellent reproducibility and uniformity plus a flexibility of configuration that will allow us to rapidly achieve high device quality.”

At HHI, research on photonic components covers both telecom and datacom applications and optical sensors and instrumentation e.g. for medical and environmental monitoring. This involves MOCVD growth of laser diode, detector and modulator structures in the 1200 nm to 1900 nm spectral range. The new AIXTRON reactor will be used for bulk-InGaAsP-, QW-InGaAsP-, QW-InGaAlAs-, and also self-assembled InAs quantum dot-based structures.