PORTFOLIO

In today’s information age, new applications like 5G, Internet of Things, or cloud computing rely strongly on an efficient communication infrastructure. The backbone of this infrastructure is the high-bandwidth optical communication network. However, the ever-increasing data traffic brings this network to its limits. One main bottleneck are the so-called electro-optic modulators. They convert the electrical data from the servers onto the optical fibres used for information transport. Today’s electro-optic modulators cannot deliver the speed required for future high-speed communications; they are too large in footprint and hence expensive in fabrication, and energy inefficient. All of this is caused by the photonic nature of current electro-optic modulators.
Polariton Technologies's objective is to overcome the current bandwidth limitations in telecommunications and sensing applications. By delivering the world's fastest and smallest modulators, we enable high-speed communication at unprecedented speed, with lowest footprints, costs and energy consumptions. This way, we relieve telecommunication system vendors from the pain of the optical interconnect bottleneck: the demand for data traffic is rapidly growing, while the speed-growth of their optical communication networks cannot keep up.

Polariton Technologies Ltd.’s plasmonic electro-optic modulators overcome this limitation by relying on plasmonics rather than photonics. Based on a scientific breakthrough at ETH Zurich, we could demonstrate plasmonic modulators that are more than 10-times faster than current modulators (500 GHz world record in the lab). Moreover, our modulators are 100-times more compact, more energy-efficient, and potentially cheaper in production. Our technology is the urgently needed technological step overcoming the electro-optic bottleneck. We enable the optical communication infrastructure to catch-up with the impressively growing demand for data transport.

Since Polariton Technologies Ltd. joined the InnoBooster program, we are happy to say that we could further develop our company on many different levels. We not only were able strengthen our financial situation with different types of funding mechanisms, but also had the opportunity to grow our team. Further, we are proud to have had a successful field demo with a selected customer. We could demonstrate our technology outside our lab for the first time and have demonstrated a world record in terms of speed. Followed by the product release in 2021, Polariton will focus on scaling-up manufacturing processes, strengthen our R&D team and built up our SG&A teams.

[1] W. Heni, Y. Fedoryshyn, B. Baeuerle, A. Josten, C. B. Hoessbacher, A. Messner, C. Haffner, T. Watanabe, Y. Salamin, U. Koch, D. L. Elder, L. R. Dalton, and J. Leuthold, "Plasmonic IQ modulators with attojoule per bit electrical energy consumption," Nature Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 1694, 2019/04/12 2019.
[2] B. Baeuerle, C. Hoessbacher, W. Heni, Y. Fedoryshyn, A. Josten, C. Haffner, T. Watanabe, D.L. Elder, L.R. Dalton, and J. Leuthold, "Driver-Less Sub 1 V pp Operation of a Plasmonic-Organic Hybrid Modulator at 100 GBd NRZ", OFC2018.
[3] C. Hoessbacher, A. Josten, B. Baeuerle, Y. Fedoryshyn, H. Hettrich, Y. Salamin, W. Heni, et al., "Plasmonic modulator with >170 GHz bandwidth demonstrated at 100 GBd NRZ," Opt. Express, vol. 25, pp. 1762-1768, Jun. 2017.