QCL manufacturing has been so far dedicated to niche products with high added value and high cost of manufacturing / high price. The cost of QCLs does not allow for a number of applications to be enabled or even just considered by the potential users. This affects the whole industry as QCLs adoption rate is much slower than it could be. A focused effort can be used to address this issue by dedicating an entire production facility to QCL manufacturing, such as Adtech Photonics. Our solution to QCL manufacturing cost reduction will leverage AdTechs deep expertise in QCL and III-V volume manufacturing and approach the issue by maximizing wafer yield while reducing overall production cost. Yield maximization will be achieved by a combination of process control, uniformity, and repeatability of key fabrication procedures, while the cost reduction will be achieved by implementing low-cost procedures that will not affect device quality, such as high throughput testing. All fabrication steps from design to epitaxial growth, buried heterostructure fabrication and device mounting are performed in-house and therefore can be completely under control. The cost of a 0.5W device can be reduced to less than $400/piece with the specifications requested by this call.
Benefit: The whole QCL and mid-infrared industry will benefit from a dedicated effort to lower the cost of QCL manufacturing. A number of commercial applications will immediately be enabled by low-cost device availability that will leverage the outcome of this project. A number of sensing applications are competing with very inexpensive solutions and the added benefit of higher precision or better sensitivity does not always justify the higher price. A low-cost solution with higher performance would find an acquisition rate much higher than current solutions that are on the market and open up a new type of market for mid-IR devices.
Keywords: high power, high power, in-house manufacturing, Low-Cost Manufacturing, III-V fabrication, mid-infrared, volume production expertise, QCL production, process uniformity
