08 Industry
L1 The chain
The lithium niobate industry — the chain that turns Brazilian ore and battery-grade lithium into crystals, wafers, thin films, and chips. LN and its sibling crystal LT are cut into acoustic filters for phones in high volume (LT appears to dominate SAW filters: inference from product pages E); thin-film LN is entering data-center optics as modulator chips.
Sections
| No. | Section | Figures | Key number | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.1 | Rock to chip | value chain; niobium per wafer | 25.8 g Nb in one 6-inch, 0.5 mm LN wafer | E |
| 8.2 | Who grows, slices, fabs, and builds | companies by stage and region | 50 of 56 atlas TFLN/TFLT papers that name a wafer supplier name NanoLN | derived |
| 8.3 | Wafer size and lane rate | wafer sizes; lane rates | 200 G/lane TFLN products available, 400 G/lane sampling (2026-06) | V |
| 8.4 | Platform comparison from the atlas | six atlas charts; platform cards | TFLN push-pull VπL median 2.44 V cm, n = 66 | derived |
| 8.5 | OFC 2026 snapshot | OFC 2026 board | 4 OFC 2026 postdeadline papers report thin-film LN or LT modulators | reported |
| 8.6 | Market size: ranges by evidence grade | range strips by publisher | Published TFLN base-year values differ by 6.5x | E |
| 8.7 | LN in your life | ten cards | Most phone SAW filters use LT, not LN; BAW filters use AlN | E |
| 8.8 | Events, 2020-2026 | event timeline | 32 dated events, each with URL and access date | derived |
L3 Data provenance
Industry facts carry source URL, access date, and evidence grade. Atlas facts carry commit, fetch date, device row, and evidence file. Atlas sample: 233 papers, 519 rows (486 device, 33 design), years 2012 to 2026, commit eb97f96 (2026-10-20); 66 papers open-license, 167 restricted (facts and locators only). Market numbers: report teaser pages only (LG).
Evidence grades
| Grade | Meaning | Default view |
|---|---|---|
| F | fact from a primary source opened and read (government data, filing, company release or product page) | shown |
| V | vendor claim about its own performance, capacity, or roadmap (read, not checked) | shown |
| T | trade press, opened and read | shown |
| C | seen only as a snippet or aggregator; page not opened | only where a figure says so, grade printed |
| LG | low grade (paywalled market teaser, investor forum, AI-assisted finance article): direction only | only where a figure says so, grade printed |
| E | estimate by this site, assumptions stated | shown |
| S | speculation, labelled | labelled |
| reported | value as reported by the paper's authors | shown |
| derived | computed in the page from atlas rows or listed inputs | shown |
Compound grades combine their parts: F/V, a company statement of a dated event of its own; F/T, a primary page with detail from trade press; T/V, trade press reporting a vendor claim; T/C, trade-press coverage of a primary page that could not be opened, shown because two trade sources agree.
Atlas files behind the charts
| Repository | Commit | File | Rows | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| jwt625/eo-modulator-atlas | eb97f96 (2026-10-20) | data/devices.csv | 519 | 0dd95c55abdf711b9511e561c5efa60db657f23553690dd211421f4036b987f7 |
| jwt625/eo-modulator-atlas | eb97f96 (2026-10-20) | data/papers.csv | 233 | 62d5ddf8325cd88f0a4995c62021cefafd9683e72b820ea6044e10585dad1b67 |
| jwt625/photonics-atlas | 26aa340 (2026-10-23) | data/supply/product_usage.csv | 1996 | 241e1c65b1058c8aeffc715d7fed14b6208806438ce2b8eefcfc0dc99abe1790 |
Neither repository carries a license file; facts are shown with attribution and locators. Subsets used by the charts: atlas-ln.json, photonics-atlas-lnoi.json, hashes in provenance.json. Industry events: /api/v1/events/industry.json. Cross-check source: photonics-atlas 26aa340 (2026-10-23).