News: Suppliers
22 June 2022
IQE announces multi-year, high-volume strategic epiwafer supply agreement with Lumentum
Epiwafer and substrate maker IQE plc of Cardiff, UK has signed a multi-year agreement with Lumentum Holdings Inc of San Jose, CA, USA (which designs and makes photonics products for optical networks and lasers for industrial and consumer markets) for the supply of epiwafers supporting 3D sensing, light detection & ranging (LiDAR) for automotive and optical networking applications.
Lumentum has been a long-term partner of IQE. Effective immediately, the multi-year agreement is focused on high-volume production of epiwafers which will be used across Lumentum’s portfolio of laser products, in particular to enable LiDAR for autonomous vehicles (AVs), where IQE will be the epitaxy partner of choice for this technology.
The partnership between IQE and Lumentum will also span a wider range of technologies such as biometric security, data communications, and extended reality. There is also further provision for multi-year joint R&D initiatives.
“Our partnership with Lumentum is in alignment with our strategy to strengthen our customer relationships and to enter into long-term agreements securing wafer supply,” says IQE’s CEO Americo Lemos. “Lumentum and IQE are industry leaders in the 3D sensing space, and this partnership is underpinned by IQE’s unrivalled technology portfolio. We look forward to our continued collaboration and expansion of our business relationship into new market segments,” he adds.
“I am pleased to extend our fruitful partnership with IQE into the future. They supported our ramp to high volumes in the consumer space, where we have shipped more than 1 billion large-scale VCSEL [vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser] arrays,” says Lumentum’s CEO Alan Lowe. “As we start to ramp high volumes of differentiated solutions into even more demanding applications in the coming years in the automotive, extended reality and industrial spaces, I’m sure our partnership will continue to flourish.”
