LiVe Optronics Company Limited
Dr. Shawn Chang, Product Marketing Director, LiVe Optronics Company Limited
Dr. Shawn Chang (張登翔) is Product Marketing Director in the Marketing and Sales Division at LiVe Optronics Company Limited (徠晶光電股份有限公司), a Taipei-based laser-chip design company delivering advanced CW DFB and VCSEL laser chips for optical communication and precision sensing.
He brings 12 years of experience in photonics and optoelectronic product development. At Live Optronics he leads product marketing across the company's laser-chip portfolio, with a focus on high-power 1310 nm CW-DFB lasers used as external light sources for silicon-photonics transceivers and co-packaged optics (CPO), and narrow-linewidth 1550 nm CW-DFB lasers for FMCW LiDAR and coherent links. The portfolio is complemented by 850 nm high-speed VCSEL arrays spanning 25 Gb/s to 224 Gb/s PAM-4.
Prior to joining Live Optronics, he served as an R&D Manager in the CTO Office at Delta Electronics. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Optics and Photonics, National Central University, Taiwan. His research interests include III-V compound-semiconductor laser design, high-power CW DFB lasers, narrow-linewidth laser sources, silicon-photonics integration and co-packaged optics.
Topic:
High-Power CW DFB Laser Chips: Enabling Silicon Photonics and Co-Packaged Optics
Abstract:
As AI data centers move toward silicon photonics and co-packaged optics (CPO), the external continuous-wave (CW) laser source has become the critical and supply-constrained component of the optical link. Unlike directly modulated architectures, CPO and silicon-photonics transceivers rely on an external CW light source, whose output power, wall-plug efficiency, noise and uncooled reliability directly set the link budget, the thermal load and ultimately the cost of the entire optical engine.
LiVe Optronics is a Taipei-based fabless laser-chip design company addressing this bottleneck. Partnering with Taiwan's leading academic photonics laboratories and leveraging Taiwan's mature compound-semiconductor supply chain, we design CW DFB laser chips for high-speed optical communication and precision sensing.
This 10-minute presentation focuses on our CW DFB laser platform and the measured results behind it. Our 1310 nm high-power CW-DFB lasers scale from the 100 mW class to an ultra-high-power >350 mW class, operate uncooled from -5 degC to 85 degC without a TEC, and reach power-conversion efficiency up to 30% at 25 degC, with RIN below -150 dB/Hz and side-mode suppression of 50 dB - designed as the external light source (ELS) for silicon-photonics transceivers and CPO. Our 1550 nm narrow-linewidth CW-DFB laser delivers a measured linewidth of approximately 50 kHz (Lorentzian fit), output power up to 94 mW at 25 degC and SMSR up to 55 dB, targeting FMCW LiDAR and long-reach coherent communication. Chips are offered as bare die or chip-on-submount (CoS) on AlN with an integrated monitor photodiode.
We conclude with the roadmap toward ultra-high-power 1310 nm CW-DFB for next-generation CPO - complemented by our 850 nm VCSEL line (25 to 224 Gb/s PAM-4) - and how a fabless laser design house can scale within Taiwan's compound-semiconductor ecosystem.
Key Technologies Covered:
• High-power 1310 nm CW-DFB laser chip design (100 mW class to >350 mW class)
• External light source (ELS) for co-packaged optics (CPO)
• CW light-source integration for silicon-photonics transceivers
• Uncooled CW operation (-5 to 85 degC, no TEC)
• Power-conversion efficiency (PCE) optimization - up to 30% at 25 degC
• Low relative intensity noise (RIN below -150 dB/Hz) CW laser design
• 1550 nm narrow-linewidth CW-DFB laser (~50 kHz) for FMCW LiDAR and coherent links
• Single-mode DFB design with side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR) up to 55 dB
• Chip-on-submount (CoS) on AlN submount with integrated monitor photodiode
• III-V epitaxial design, device simulation and CW characterization (L-I-V, PCE, RIN, linewidth)