July 7, 2006, Bothell, WA--Lumera Corporation, an emerging leader in the field of nanotechnology, announced that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) selected Lumera amongst competing companies to award it a $3.45 million contract which, based on the achievements of certain milestones, will be followed by a $2.43 million contract for a total of $5.8 million. The contract is to build state-of-the-art electro-optic polymer modulators.
The scope of the two-year multi-phase project involves developing materials with unprecedented electro-optic coefficients, with qualified thermal and photo-stability and processing them into devices. The objective of the project is to provide high performance polymer optical modulators that are critical in leading-edge defense applications, including terrestrial and satellite RF photonic links and phased array radar. These devices will be manufactured by transitioning recently developed electro-optic polymers into novel device designs to reduce drive voltage and optical loss.
"We are very proud to have been selected by DARPA for this important project. The recent advance that Lumera has made on our polymers' electro-optic properties and device design was a key factor in our winning this contract over competition from multi-billion dollar international corporations," said Tom Mino, president and CEO.
Overall system efficiency is a crucial consideration for certain power-limited systems. This means that power efficient electro-optic polymer modulators must possess both low drive voltage and low optical loss, while still maintaining a large bandwidth, and being consistent with large-scale manufacturing parameters. Several attempts have been made with limited success. The combination of Lumera's unique proprietary materials and patented device designs has succeeded in achieving lower drive voltages and lower loss. With this project, Lumera will develop enhanced versions of these modulators in scale-up quantities.
For more information, see www.lumera.com.