AMO Scientific Lithium Tantalate Thin Film on Insulator (LTOI) Wafers

AMO Scientific Lithium Tantalate Thin Film on Insulator (LTOI) Wafers

Lithium Tantalate Thin Film on Insulator (LTOI) wafer is a layered semiconductor/photonics substrate that places a very thin single-crystal layer of lithium tantalate, LiTaO₃, on top of an insulating layer, usually SiO₂.

A typical structure is:

Thin-film LiTaO₃
↓
SiO₂ insulating layer
↓
Silicon or LiTaO₃ handle substrate

Bulk lithium tantalate has long been used for acoustic and electro-optic devices, but putting it into a sub-micron thin-film structure gives much stronger optical confinement. This makes it possible to fabricate compact waveguides, resonators, modulators, and other photonic integrated circuits. Recent wafer-scale research has demonstrated LTOI made by ion implantation/ion cutting followed by wafer bonding, similar in concept to SOI and LNOI manufacturing.

LTOI is particularly attractive because LiTaO₃ has:

• Strong electro-optic/Pockels effect → useful for high-speed optical modulators.
• Piezoelectric properties → useful for SAW/RF filters and acousto-optic devices.
• Nonlinear optical properties → wavelength conversion, frequency combs, etc.
• High optical-damage resistance and good thermal/bias stability relative to lithium niobate in some applications.
• Potential for low-loss integrated photonics; recent work has demonstrated LTOI waveguides with losses well below 0.1 dB/cm.

This makes LTOI useful for devices such as:

• High-speed electro-optic modulators
• Photonic integrated circuits (PICs)
• SAW/BAW and RF filters
• Acousto-optic devices
• Optical resonators
• Nonlinear optics
• Quantum photonics
• Microwave-to-optical conversion
• Optical signal processing

AMO Scientific can customize the LiTaO₃ orientation/thin film thickness, SiO₂ layer thickness and substrate material. Please contact us to discuss your need.

 Sample Wafer Specifications: