Electro-optical photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on lithium niobate (LiNbO₃) have demonstrated the vast capabilities of materials with a high Pockels coefficient^1,2. They enable linear and high-speed modulators operating at complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor voltage levels³ to be used in applications including data-centre communications⁴, high-performance computing and photonic accelerators for AI⁵. However, industrial use of this technology is hindered by the high cost per wafer and the limited wafer size. The high cost results from the lack of existing high-volume applications in other domains of the sort that accelerated the adoption of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) photonics, which was driven by vast investment in microelectronics. Here we report low-loss PICs made of lithium tantalate (LiTaO₃), a material that has already been adopted commercially for 5G radiofrequency filters⁶ and therefore enables scalable manufacturing at low cost, and it has equal, and in some cases superior, properties to LiNbO₃. We show that LiTaO₃ can be etched to create low-loss (5.6 dB m⁻¹) PICs using a deep ultraviolet (DUV) stepper-based manufacturing process⁷. We demonstrate a LiTaO₃ Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) with a half-wave voltage–length product of 1.9 V cm and an electro-optic bandwidth of up to 40 GHz. In comparison with LiNbO₃, LiTaO₃ exhibits a much lower birefringence, enabling high-density circuits and broadband operation over all telecommunication bands. Moreover, the platform supports the generation of soliton microcombs. Our work paves the way for the scalable manufacture of low-cost and large-volume next-generation electro-optical PICs.

_{基于铌酸锂 (LiNbO 3} )的电光光子集成电路 (PIC)已经证明了具有高普克尔斯系数^1,2的材料的巨大功能。它们使在互补金属氧化物半导体电压电平³下运行的线性高速调制器能够用于数据中心通信⁴、高性能计算和人工智能光子加速器⁵等应用。然而，该技术的工业应用受到每片晶圆成本高和晶圆尺寸有限的阻碍。高成本是由于其他领域缺乏现有的大批量应用而加速了绝缘体上硅（SOI）光子学的采用，而这是由微电子领域的巨额投资推动的。在这里，我们报告了由钽酸锂 (LiTaO ₃ )制成的低损耗 PIC ，这种材料已在商业上用于 5G 射频滤波器⁶，因此能够以低成本进行可扩展制造，并且它具有相同的、在某些情况下甚至更优越的特性至LiNbO ₃。我们表明，可以使用基于深紫外 (DUV) 步进机的制造工艺蚀刻 LiTaO ₃以创建低损耗 (5.6 dB m ^{-1 ) PIC 7}。我们展示了 LiTaO ₃ Mach-Zehnder 调制器 (MZM)，其半波电压长度积为 1.9 V cm，电光带宽高达 40 GHz。与LiNbO ₃相比，LiTaO ₃表现出低得多的双折射率，从而能够在所有电信频段上实现高密度电路和宽带操作。此外，该平台支持孤子微梳的生成。我们的工作为低成本、大批量下一代光电 PIC 的可扩展制造铺平了道路。