Our mission: To be a world leader in the development of advanced materials for next-generation semiconductor, photonics and alternative energy applications
Advanced Materials are the cornerstone of the Electronics, Semiconductor and Solar Photovoltaic arenas. Novel materials in conjunction with scaling have allowed for the continuation of increased device performance. The industry foundation is built upon providing evolutionary and revolutionary advances to meet the respective roadmap requirements.
At the heart of the company’s materials portfolio are rare earths oxides (REO’s) that can be integrated onto silicon in such a way that enhanced devices can be manufactured using standard semiconductor processing techniques. This technology is underpinned by a suite of issued patents
Translucent’s ‘optical silicon’ material incorporating REO’s is the original materials development project upon which the company was founded in 2001. The development of optically active silicon which is fully compatible with current silicon chip fabrication techniques has been a long held objective of the semiconductor industry, and is becoming ever more critical to the continued progress of the silicon chip industry according to Moore’s Law. In particular, the development of a silicon laser and optical amplifier - both requiring optical gain - and silicon optical interconnects scaleable to current and future nano-technology nodes is of fundamental importance to maintaining such progress.
Translucent has more recently embarked on a proof-of-concept program for solar energy conversion materials utilizing the same family of REO materials developed in the photonics initiative described above. Current activities for solar photovoltaics involve producing prototype solar cells for third party testing and industry validation.