IQE expands partnership with Quintessent amid AI demand boom
By Josh White
Date: Friday 24 Jan 2025
(Sharecast News) - Compound semiconductor wafer products supplier IQE announced the expansion of its partnership with Quintessent on Friday, to establish the world's first large-scale quantum dot laser and semiconductor optical amplifier epitaxial wafer supply chain.
The AIM-traded firm said the collaboration had secured an initial purchase order worth $0.5m for the delivery of production wafers through 2025.
It said the increasing demand for AI-driven applications had intensified the need for high-bandwidth, low-latency, and energy-efficient optical interconnects, driving a shift from copper-based chip connectivity to silicon photonics in data centres.
Traditional laser technologies faced challenges in meeting these requirements, making quantum dot lasers and semiconductor optical amplifiers a crucial innovation due to their extended lifetimes, enhanced efficiency, reduced noise, and resilience to environmental fluctuations, the firm explained.
IQE and Quintessent had been working together for more than a decade to transition quantum dot laser technology from research to large-scale production.
Leveraging breakthroughs from John Bower's laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the partnership has achieved significant advancements, including the development of gallium arsenide-based quantum dot epitaxial wafers on six-inch substrates.
That, the board said, represented a step forward from the current four-inch indium phosphide laser technology, enabling the production of hundreds of millions of high-performance edge-emitting lasers annually.
"IQE is proud to strengthen our long-standing partnership with Quintessent, driving the commercialisation of QDL technology," said IQE's interim chief executive and chief financial officer Jutta Meier.
"This commitment highlights our expertise in high-volume epitaxial wafer manufacturing and our proven ability to scale innovative semiconductor solutions into production.
"Our collaboration, spanning commercial products and DoD programmes, has delivered QDL wafers with exceptional reproducibility and lasing performance."
At 0906 GMT, shares in IQE were up 8.52% at 14.33p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.
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