Lithium niobate products have a variety of excellent properties and are widely used in many fields, the following are their main application areas:
Optical communication field
- Electro-optical modulator: Lithium niobate electro-optical modulator is a key device in optical communication, using its linear electro-optical effect to achieve the modulation of parameters such as amplitude, phase and polarization state of optical signals, with high speed, high extinction ratio, low chirp and other advantages, suitable for high-speed external modulators for optical communication, including amplitude modulators, phase modulators and other products, mainly used in 100G-1.2T long-distance backbone network coherent communication and single-wave 100/200G ultra-high-speed data centers and other scenarios.
- Optical switching: Based on the electro-optical effect of lithium niobate crystals, it can realize the rapid switching and routing of optical signals, and is used for signal distribution and transfer at the nodes of the optical communication network, improving the flexibility and scalability of the network.
- Optical parametric oscillator: Lithium niobate crystal can be used to prepare optical parametric oscillators, which convert pump light into signal light and idle frequency light of different frequencies through a nonlinear optical process, which can produce tunable laser output, which is used in the wavelength division multiplexing system of optical communication to provide multi-wavelength light sources and increase communication capacity.
- Optical waveguide devices: Lithium niobate crystals can be prepared into high-quality optical waveguides through proton exchange or titanium diffusion, which are used to realize the transmission and coupling of optical signals, and are used as basic optical transmission components in optical communication chips and integrated optical paths to improve the transmission efficiency and integration of optical signals.
Laser technology field
- Laser frequency doubling device: Using the nonlinear optical effect of lithium niobate crystal, the frequency of the laser can be doubled, such as doubling the frequency of the 1064nm infrared laser to the green light of 532nm, which is widely used in laser display, laser processing, laser medical and other fields.
- Laser Q-switch: Insert a lithium niobate Q-switch in the laser resonator cavity to adjust the loss and gain of the laser by controlling its electro-optical effect to achieve the pulse output of the laser, which can produce high-energy, short-pulse lasers, and is used in laser ranging, lidar, laser processing and other fields.
- Laser polarization controller: Lithium niobate crystals can be used to make laser polarization controllers that change the polarization state of the laser by adjusting its electro-optical effect, and play an important role in applications such as laser interferometry and laser communication that require precise control of the laser polarization state.
Piezoelectric application fields
- Acoustic surface wave filter: Lithium niobate crystal is an ideal material for making acoustic surface wave filters, using its piezoelectric effect and physical characteristics of acoustic surface wave propagation, it can filter the signals in the communication channel, widely used in aerospace, mobile phones, walkie-talkies, satellite communications and other fields, and is an important part of the front-end RF filter in 5G communication.
- Resonators, transducers, delay lines, etc.: Lithium niobate crystals can be used to make various piezoelectric devices, such as resonators, transducers, delay lines, etc., and are used in mobile communications, satellite communications, digital signal processing, television, radio, radar, remote sensing and telemetry and other civilian fields, as well as electronic countermeasures, fuzes, guidance and other military fields.
Other areas of application
- Optical holographic storage: The photorefractive effect of lithium niobate crystals can be used for optical holographic storage, which stores information by recording the interference pattern of light, and has the advantages of large storage capacity, high data transmission rate, parallel reading and writing, etc., and has potential application prospects in the field of data storage.
- Infrared detectors: Lithium niobate crystals are ideal materials for making infrared detectors due to their pyroelectric properties, which can be used to detect infrared radiation signals and are used in security monitoring, infrared remote sensing, medical detection and other fields.
- Acousto-optic devices: The acoustic and optic effects of lithium niobate crystals can be used to manufacture acousto-optic deflectors, acousto-optic modulators, etc., which are used to realize the deflection and modulation of optical signals, and are used in laser display, optical communication, optical storage and other fields.
- Rare earth doped devices: Rare earth ions such as erbium are doped into lithium niobate to achieve on-chip amplification and lasers, such as waveguide amplifiers with a net gain of 18dB, microring lasers with thresholds below milliwatts, electro-optical tunable microdisk lasers, etc., which are key components of fully integrated lithium niobate optoelectronic chips.
- Thermoelectric detectors for mid-infrared sensing, nonlinear metasurfaces for efficient frequency conversion, visible wavelength modulators and other components, integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors, etc.: The versatility of lithium niobate allows it to be used in the manufacture of a variety of other optoelectronic devices that play a role in different optoelectronic and photonics applications.