Nonlinear Materials Corporation

nlmphotonics.com

NLM Photonics is a semiconductor technology company developing cutting-edge electro-optic modulation technology for transforming networking, computing, and sensing alongside our partners in the US, Europe, and Japan. Based on 20+ years of research from the University of Washington (UW), our hybrid organic electro-optic technology enables low-voltage, low-power, high-performance transfer of data between electronics (the ubiquitous computer chip) and photonics (the technology used in fiber optics, LIDAR, and other groundbreaking technologies). NLM’s technology enables tighter and more efficient integration of electronics and ultra-fast photonics. NLM’s Hybrid Organic EO (OEO) Technology is a patented combination of materials and process technologies, enabling efficient EO modulation in datacenter and computing hardware that meets the demand of future growth in networking for AI and other applications. Photonics is transforming networking, computing, and sensing. The largest use to date has been for data transmission and networking in telecom and datacenter infrastructure, using light to efficiently move data over fiber optic networks. Silicon photonics is the incumbent platform for integrated photonics in datacenter network hardware, but signal conversion between electronics and photonics on this platform is power-hungry and cannot scale to sufficient bandwidth to meet future needs in AI and other applications. This has created a need for alternative electro-optic (EO) modulation technologies that can be integrated with silicon photonics and address this bottleneck. Alternate emerging modulation technologies have limitations in bandwidth, device footprint, thermal stability, or cost and complexity of integration with silicon photonics and conventional CMOS VLSI electronics. NLM’s Hybrid Organic EO (OEO) Technology uniquely solves these issues. It can be retrofitted into silicon photonics processes in late-stage advanced packaging steps, minimize changes to complex chipmaking processes and infrastructure while providing superior modulator power efficiency (10-1000×) and enabling scalable bandwidth. The technology can be deployed through multiple fabs as a semiconductor IP block for broad reach and has been demonstrated at leading translational research fabs, leading to extensive recent interest by hyperscale datacenter operators and commercial fabs. NLM’s deployment is also accelerated by strategic investors including TOK (a major photoresist manufacturer with extensive materials supply agreements with fabs) and photonics components leader Hamamatsu Photonics.