Optical Transceiver Chips
Optical transceiver chips are mainly divided into laser diode chips and photo diode chips, respectively used in laser diodes (such as VCSEL, DFB, EML) for converting electrical signals into optical signals at the transmission end, and in photo diodes (such as PIN, APD) for converting optical signals into electrical signals at the receiver end. They are assembled with filters, metal caps, ceramic tubes and some other components into TOSA, ROSA, or BOSA, and then packaged with PCB, electronic chips and some other sub-assemblies into optical transceiver modules. Optical chips are the core element in optical transceivers. Its performance directly determines attributes including the transmission rate, temperature drift, operation stability and signal-to-noise ratio of optical transceiver modules. In terms of cost, optical chips and sub-assemblies take up 50% to 70% of the total cost of optical transceiver modules, tunable laser, etc.

Passive Optical Component Chips
Optical Laser chips are also used in passive optical components mainly include PLC (Planar Lightwave Circuits) optical splitter chips and AWG (Array Waveguide Grating) chips. PLC optical splitter chips are usually made of two kinds of technology, silicon dioxide optical waveguide and glass optical waveguide. It is composed of multiple branches cascaded to realize the coupling, branching and distribution of optical signals.

AWG chips are composed of two multiport couplers and connected array waveguides, to realize wavelength division multiplexing of N*1, wavelength division demultiplexing of 1*N and wavelength routing of N*N, etc. It is widely used in WDM optical module, ROADM and WSS.

Application Scenarios
Optical/Laser chips emit light based on the principle of stimulated emission and can divided into surface-emitting type and edge-emitting type. Surface-emitting type mainly refers to VCSEL (Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser), suitable for short-distance multi mode application. Edge-emitting type mainly includes FP (Fabry-Perot laser), DFB (Distributed Feedback Laser) and EML (Electro-Absorption Modulated Laser). FP is suitable for application of short to medium reach below 10G, while DFB and EML are suitable for high speed data rate on medium to long reach. EML is currently the main light source for achieving single channel rate of 50G and above, by integrating EAM (Electro-Absorption Modulator) to DFB. Photo diode chips include two main types: PIN(Positive-Intrinsic-Negative Photo Diode) and APD(Avalanche Photo Diode). The former has relatively low sensitivity and is applied to medium and short reach, while the latter has high sensitivity and is applied to medium and long distance.