California startup Aeluma is accelerating the production of its sensors and quantum-dot lasers, leveraging a breakthrough technology that combines indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) with 300-mm silicon wafers—a first in the industry. This innovation is set to expand InGaAs applications across a broader range of devices.
Klamkin, who has been advancing InGaAs technology since his time as a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara over a decade ago, also revealed that Aeluma plans to announce a manufacturing partnership with a U.S.-based foundry in the coming months.
Traditionally limited to smaller wafers, InGaAs is now viable on larger 300-mm wafers thanks to Aeluma’s material innovation. This opens the door to new use cases that were previously impractical due to production constraints.
“Our main goal has been to scale shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensors for mobile and consumer markets,” Klamkin explained. “But we’re also developing quantum-dot lasers for AI infrastructure. Our 300-mm MOCVD process lets us deposit InGaAs and similar materials directly onto silicon. We work with different wafer sizes depending on customer needs, including 200-mm and smaller wafers for development and lower-volume runs.”
Aeluma currently focuses much of its efforts on serving the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), according to CEO Jonathan Klamkin.
“We deliberately targeted defense and aerospace first because those sectors already rely on this technology, and we knew it would be a quick path to success,” Klamkin said. “At the same time, we’ve been building out the technology for broader commercial markets, which are now beginning to gain momentum.”
Within aerospace and defense, Aeluma is ramping up output of shortwave infrared (SWIR) chips, primarily used in high-performance imaging systems like large-format cameras. The company has ongoing contracts with several key U.S. government organizations, including the Navy, Air Force, DARPA, NASA, and the Department of Energy.
“Our technology enables bigger cameras and smaller pixels for HD infrared imaging—capabilities that weren’t feasible with the older, smaller wafer formats,” Klamkin said. “By using larger silicon wafers like 200 mm and 300 mm, we unlock better performance and advanced integration techniques like wafer-scale packaging, which simply isn’t possible with outdated two-inch indium-phosphide wafers.”
Beyond military and aerospace applications, Aeluma is now pushing to scale its InGaAs chips for broader consumer electronics markets, including smartphones.
“In consumer sectors, the focus is really on ramping up high-volume manufacturing and driving costs down,” said Klamkin.
Rising Interest in SWIR
Interest in SWIR technology is growing. At the IEDM 2024 conference in California, research institute imec and collaborators unveiled a prototype SWIR sensor using indium-arsenide quantum-dot photodiodes. Their device, which produced 1,390-nm imaging, offered a lead-free alternative to older, toxic quantum-dot technologies—marking a significant step toward affordable, mass-market infrared imaging.
In consumer electronics, Klamkin highlighted the iPhone as an example of a product that could benefit from SWIR. Current Face ID systems use vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and silicon-based near-infrared detectors, which can pose eye-safety concerns.
“These systems aren’t eye-safe, so they have to use very low illumination power,” he said. “Switching to SWIR not only makes the system safe for eyes—so you can increase power safely—it also reduces solar interference and improves overall performance.”
Klamkin noted that customer feedback on Aeluma’s prototypes has been strong.
“Our sensors have a dark current a thousand times lower than the germanium-based alternatives customers have been testing, and our efficiency exceeds 90%,” he said. “That’s the kind of performance that makes SWIR viable for consumer use.”
Dark current, the unwanted flow of charge in sensors even without light, degrades image quality by adding noise—something Aeluma’s technology minimizes significantly.
AI Data Centers
Aeluma’s technology is also poised to make an impact in AI data centers by helping reduce power consumption, Klamkin noted.
Companies like Nvidia, Marvell, and Broadcom—leaders in transceivers for AI infrastructure—are moving toward co-packaged optics, integrating optical interconnects directly with switch ASICs or GPUs.
“We recently demonstrated a high-performance quantum-dot laser, most of which was grown in-house at Aeluma,” Klamkin said. “The light output was successfully coupled into silicon photonics waveguides. There’s growing interest in quantum-dot lasers because they offer significantly better performance compared to traditional technologies.”
