February 17, 2004 Wilmington, DE, and Wilmington, MA -- DuPont Photonics Technologies, provider of integrated optical components and a wholly owned subsidiary of DuPont, has introduced integrated variable optical attenuator (iVOA) arrays based on planar lightwave circuitry (PLC). The iVOA arrays are ideal for use in intelligent WDM systems and optical add drop multiplexer (OADM) modules for channel and band balancing, power control, and dynamic gain equalization.
Based on DuPont's library of optical building blocks, the iVOA family of products integrates up to 40 channels of variable optical attenuators on a single chip. DuPont's VOA arrays operate across the C and L bands with low insertion loss, low polarization dependent loss (PDL), low wavelength dependent loss (WDL), low temperature dependent loss (TDL), low power consumption, high dynamic range, and simple electronic control, say company representatives. The iVOA chips are hermetically packaged to provide excellent reliability. In addition, the iVOA products have no moving parts and are stable to mechanical vibrations.
"Enabled by our powerful materials and advanced design, our iVOA arrays provide the highest performance among PLC VOA arrays," contends Chuck Xu, vice president of marketing and business development at DuPont Photonics. "And by integrating multiple channels of VOA's on a single chip, we are able to offer our customers significant component savings in both cost and space, in addition to eliminating the cost associated with assembly of bulky discrete components and complex fiber management," he adds.
DuPont Photonics is currently shipping evaluation samples. Live demonstrations of the product will be conducted in the company's booth (#1211) at OFC 2004 later this month in Los Angeles, CA.