News: Optoelectronics
23 June 2025
US Navy funds Aeluma to accelerate development and commercialization of high-speed photodetectors for optical interconnects
Aeluma Inc of Goleta, CA, USA — which develops compound semiconductor materials on large-diameter substrates — has announced a contract with the US Navy that could accelerate development of high-speed photodetectors for government and commercial applications.
Aeluma's large-diameter wafer platform combines the performance of compound semiconductors with the scale of mainstream silicon manufacturing, enabling cost-effective solutions across high-growth markets including mobile, AI, defense & aerospace, automotive, AR/VR, and quantum computing. The platform has demonstrated high-speed photodetectors for optical interconnects with the potential to provide massive bandwidth scaling, which is critical for government applications, high-performance computing (HPC), and AI infrastructure.
The new contract is for up to $1.3m in funding, includes a major global interconnect manufacturer as a proposed subcontractor, and involves support from a top-tier government prime contractor. In addition to scaling for high-volume commercial markets, Aeluma’s large-diameter wafer platform is compatible with wafer-scale integration with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) electronics using advanced packaging technology, which is being aggressively pursued by major compute, data-center, networking and module suppliers for next-generation optical interconnects.
“This award is a clear vote of confidence in Aeluma's breakthrough technology and its potential to scale both in performance and in volume,” reckons Matthew Dummer Ph.D., director of technology. “Building on our successful demonstrations of large-wafer photodetectors for sensing and communication applications, this funding will enable us to accelerate commercialization for high-growth commercial markets while meeting the demanding requirements of our customers in defense and aerospace.”
Aeluma says that it continues to build momentum as it attracts interest from customers across a range of market verticals for its high-performance and scalable semiconductor platform. Combined with its quantum dot laser technology, the high-speed photodetectors position the firm to make a potential impact in critical areas for defense & aerospace, HPC, AI and quantum computing, it is reckoned.
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