Israel’s Semi Conductor Devices to Lead Consortium on Development of Novel Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser Devices

Israeli company Semi Conductor Devices (SCD) will lead a National Consortium for the development of next generation Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSEL).

The consortium is supported by the Israeli Innovation Authority through its MAGNET Consortium program.

The VCSEL consortium has been formed by leading high-tech companies and academic institutions, including Nvidia, Civan Advanced Technologies, Galil Microwaves, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The focus will be to develop technologies for three main applications: high power lasers, high speed telecommunication, and atomic clocks.

Since being industrialized in the 1990s, VCSELs have become important building blocks in various applications, such as fiber-optic data transmission and, recently, facial recognition for smartphones. When it comes to manufacturability, VCSELs offer significant advantages over traditional edge-emitting laser technologies, including the ability to process large quantities of diodes on a single wafer, enabling testing at the wafer level, and more.

With the establishment of this consortium, SCD, together with leading academic scientists in the field, intends to develop an innovative, high-power VCSEL that will enable a new paradigm in optical laser pumping for many commercial and defense applications. SCD will leverage its semiconductor expertise and long-standing history of developing and manufacturing of high-power laser diodes to develop this next generation VCSEL solution.