Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1415897
50 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 meet the protection needs of products where other solutions may fall short. HZO has mul- tiple projects in development for its Spectrum of Protection™. Lastly, HZO uses a process called atomic layer deposition (ALD). Unlike CVD, which is a one-coating process from a vapor form, HZO applies multiple layers of robust materi- als, including metals and ceramics. ALD coat- ings provide significant coverage for minia- ture to microscopic components. ere are two types of conformal coating application methods or processes for ALD: thermal and spatial. e thermal, or stationary, method in- volves injecting one material at a time into the coating chamber, waiting for it to attach itself to the component to be coated, then purging the remaining residual from the chamber. A second material is then added to the chamber to cause a chemical reaction to the first one. is process is repeated with each addition- al layer of material until the desired number of atomic layers have been applied. e spa- tial method uses a divided chamber to sepa- rate the precursor reactions to different zones. Parts are moved quickly between the zones to facilitate rapid layer on layer growth. Conclusion For companies who directly manufacture, conformal coating solutions are available in the form of direct sale or lease. For compa- nies without their own production capabili- ties, protection services are available to pro- vide coating protection on finished product as an outsourced send-and-return process. SMT007 Zsolt Pulai is vice president of engineering at HZO. Tower Semiconductor, a leading foundry of high- value analog semiconductor solutions, and Quint- essent, a leader in laser integration with silicon pho- tonic integrated circuits, announced their collabo- ration to create the world's first silicon photonics (SiPho) process with integrated quantum dot lasers, addressing optical connectivity in artificial intelli- gence/machine learning and disaggregated com- puting (datacenter) markets. According to the mar- ket research firm Yole, the silicon photonics trans- ceivers market for datacenters is expected to grow rapidly at a CAGR of 40% to reach $3.5B in 2025. The new foundry process will build upon Tower's industry-lead- ing PH18 production silicon pho- tonics platform and add Quint- essent's III-V quantum dot-based lasers and optical amplifiers to enable a complete suite of active and passive sil- icon photonic elements. The resulting capability will be an industry first in demonstrating integrat- ed optical gain in a standard foundry silicon pho- tonics process. The initial process development kit (PDK) is planned in 2021, with multi-project wafer runs (MPWs) following in 2022. "Quintessent and Tower are re-defining the fron- tiers of integrated silicon photonics under this ef- fort," said Dr. John Bowers, UCSB Professor and Quintessent Co-Founder. "I'm very excited by the prospects for a new class of high- performance lasers and photonic integrated circuits on silicon, le- veraging the unique advantages of quantum dot materials." (Source: Globe News Wire) Image credit: Brian Long, UCSB Tower Semiconductor, Quintessent to Create Foundry Silicon Photonics Platform with Integrated Quantum Dot Laser New capability to address optical connectivity in Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning (AI/ML) and disaggregated computing (datacenter)