Derekwpg,

You seem a little confused at the moment about the difference in the metrics used to describe the technology and I haven't seen it explained sufficiently since your quiry. I'm sure you'll understand after a brief reminder so I hope this helps.

The 40nm and 100nm efforts refer to the distance between the circuitry on the die. This was also the 800nm that you were refering to POET being not that long ago. But the dimensions referred to in the article (980nm for example) were referring to the wavelength of the light transmission and detection. The two metrics are not directly related.

For the benefit of all...

From Wikipedia:

"In physics, the term light sometimes refers to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not.[4][5] In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light. Like all types of light, visible light is emitted and absorbed in tiny "packets" called photons, and exhibits properties of both waves andparticles."

The term wavelength refers to just what it sounds like, the length of one wave from peak to peak. Different types of electromagnetic radiation operate at different wavelengths and can be independantly transmitted and detected. This is the reason one optical fiber can carry so much information, by using a broad range of the spectrum to separate the transmissions without mixing them up.

I gathered from the SPIE article that longer wavelengths are desirable because of reduced power requirements to transmit. On that note, here is an excerpt from latest POET Technology Overview that speaks to the wavelengths of light that using in its technology. These figures have been published before but this is just the most recent that I know of and easier to find.

http://www.poet-technologies.com/docs/POET-Overview.pdf

Page 5

"Various modifications of the basic POET epitaxial structure are being designed to support emission or reception at wavelengths of 980, 1310 or 1550 nanometeres. ODIS’s structure and fabrication also is being developed to provide detection and emission from the 3 to 20 micrometer band via the attributes of its quantum well structure."

Hope this helps clear things up for you and everyone else. Thanks for asking the questions Derekwpg.

Green