VCSEL Industry. Babu Dayal Padullaparthi
object detection for autonomous vehicles and intelligent transport through powerful long‐range LiDARs up to 250 m or beyond. Further high‐power VCSEL arrays (where 100 000 to a few million units of emitters are needed) find applications in industrial heating.
Furthermore, we find VCSEL applications in neighboring areas such as coherent communication, laser printers, additive manufacturing, gas sensing and spectroscopy, biometrics such as optical coherence tomography (OCT) and iris scans, gaming (VR and MR), robotics, and drones attracting considerable investments, particularly on AI programming, smart home and IoT, and automotive Ethernet and even to quantum computing.
1.5.3 Toward VCSEL High‐Volume Manufacturing
The proliferation of VCSELs into several industries and their use in countless commercial products make the VCSEL industry bright and vibrant. In Figure 1.19 we show the market of VCSELs estimated in 2021. It is quite amazing to realize that hundreds of millions of VCSELs have been deployed. The overall market is forecast to continue to grow in current core applications, and it is expected that even more areas will be uncovered to edge areas in the future. The large shipping volume has created an ecosystem of vertically integrated manufacturers as well as robust foundry vendors. With millions of epi‐wafers processed, multibillion‐dollar market forecasts, and nearly a trillion of VSCEL units shipped, undoubtedly VCSELs are the future optical components of choice and are cementing their presence in the photonics industry!
Figure 1.19 Application fields of VCSEL market as of 2021; data taken from various sources.
Source: Figure by B. D. Padullaparthi and K. Iga [copyright reserved by authors].
In Figure 1.20, we show a modified hype cycle of VCSEL industrialization. This shows the timeline of VCSEL industrialization based on Iga’s personal limited knowledge. In Chapter 10, we will discuss this matter after reviewing all the items in technical chapters by all the authors and editor by including other applications.
Figure 1.20 The modified hype cycle of VCSEL industrialization.
Source: K. Iga’s observation in the middle of 2020 [copyright reserved by author].
1.5.4 Prospects of VCSEL Market
At the beginning of 2021, VCSEL technology has emerged as a low‐cost, high‐volume business opportunity for large‐scale manufacturers, comparable to other semiconductor technologies such as GaN, SiC RF, and power devices, LEDs, displays, photovoltaic solar cells, Si‐photonics, and InP‐based semiconductor lasers. A schematic of market sizes for different VCSEL technologies are shown in Figure 1.21. The total photonics market is expected to reach about $80 billion by 2025 from $24 billion in 2020. The authors consider two types of opportunities for VCSEL‐based commercial products, namely core and edge markets.
The core market includes four major areas: datacom, 3D sensing (mobile), 3D imaging LiDAR (automotive), and industrial heating. In these areas, VCSEL is a proven technology addressing strong societal needs and appears to be gaining a major market share with readily available commercial products.
The edge markets include defense and aerospace, medical (OCT and iris scans), gas sensing, gaming, global AR/VR/MR, surveillance (IP and CCTV cameras), 3D printing, laser printing, and many other applications. Other edge markets such as robotics, AI, and smart‐home appliances either have small market share or are still developing prototypes for final stages of release for commercial products [58].
Figure 1.21 Total addressable market of VCSELs at module levels till 2025.
Source: B. D. Padullaparthi [copyright reserved by author].
The total addressable market projected for VCSEL’s core and edge areas at module level is expected to be around $40 billion by 2025, where the core part alone is forecast to be about a $24 billion by 2025 market, as shown in Figure 1.20.
The chip level projection for datacom, telecom, mobile consumer, automotive, medical, industrial, and defense fields is estimated to be about $4.8 billion by 2025, that is 24% of the corresponding module level projections.
With an increasing number of autonomous cars with LiDARs by 2030, it is anticipated that the market size of the automotive industry will exceed that of consumer electronics, prompting a large number of VCSELs to be used for long‐distance ranging as flash or scan LiDARs. Further, several edge and other markets projected a total reaching $80 billion. When a fraction of 15% (about $8.4 billion) is assumed for add value to core fields, the total addressable market size at module level will be at least about $32.4 B, as shown in Figure 1.20. Some chip level details are given in Chapter 3.
In summary, it is concluded that VCSEL is finding a vibrant commercial prospect for high‐volume manufacturing and product demands that are further expanding.
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