Lightwave Logic Strengthens Cooperation with Tower for High-speed Modulators
Recently, Lightwave Logic, a leader in electro-optic (EO) polymer technology, announced a development agreement with Tower Semiconductor, a silicon photonics wafer manufacturer. The agreement includes incorporating Lightwave Logic’s EO polymer modulator technology IP into Tower’s PH18 silicon photonics platform to achieve leading high-speed optical modulators. Lightwave Logic utilizes its proprietary electro-optic polymer to achieve lower power consumption, smaller space, and higher speed data transmission.
Lightwave Logic is designed for highly compact and energy-efficient modulators with bandwidths of 110GHz and above. Combined with Tower’s PH18 Silicon Photon Platform Process Design Kit (PDK), it can help silicon optical modulator customers efficiently develop 400G per channel highly compact and high-performance optical modulator chips in their photonic integrated circuit (PIC) development.
The development plan will include conducting multiple engineering tapeouts in 2026 to validate the performance targets of low-power 200G and 400G modulator architectures. These features are designed to support the growing demand for AI scale up and scale out network clusters, as well as high-performance computing, networking, and advanced photonics applications that require bandwidth density and energy efficiency.
Dr. Ed Priesler, Vice President and General Manager of Tower Semiconductor’s RF Business Unit, stated that the PH18 silicon photonics platform has achieved further growth by expanding the scalable options of modulator design. With the introduction of Lightwave Logic’s unique modulator technology into our PDK library, customers can achieve compact and high-speed modulator products on scalable wafer fab platforms. We are delighted to collaborate with leading material innovators to help accelerate the development of next-generation photonic designs for our clients in the photonics industry.
Yves LeMaitre, CEO and President of Lightwave Logic, stated,” The Tower Silicon Photonics platform has gained extensive market validation and a diverse customer base. This collaboration enables us to introduce the advantages of electro-optic polymer modulator technology into wafer fab PDK, lowering the threshold for customers to develop differentiated photon solutions and accelerating innovation.”
As part of their collaboration, Tower and Lightwave Logic plan to provide customers with 2026 engineering wafer fabrication services for early validation of modulator designs on the PH18 platform. Customers in China can contact Lightwave Logic partner Futai Technology to access this service.