I've always been intrigued by a statement made by Dr. Taylor at the 2012 AGM (heard here; cued to the relevant start and end time).

I have to admit I had forgotten that even the transistors were described as being totally different than those commonly used in III-V, which further reinforces my impression that Lee S was absolutely in love with Taylor's complementary transistors (and based on the move towards 100nm, so are the folks the SSC is wooing)

Dr. Taylor, from the video:

"It's not your standard transistor . . . and the laser is not your standard laser . . . your standard laser wouldn't work . . ."

" . . . normal optical person would say 'where the heck's the laser. That doesn't look right . . ."

What I first liked about these statements was that it made Taylor's work seem so groundbreaking; that it would be seen as totally novel by other engineers. I see now why he felt that other's would fail to see the laser if they had a chance to examine a chip.

Take a look at this patent:

https://www.google.com/patents/US7012274

While I can't claim to understand it fully, the pictures help explain his statements clearly. Structurally, the thyristor - which makes the laser function possible, is very similar in structure to the transistors shown in the same patent. I'm sure that a trained engineer would argue that the diagrams are significantly different as to distinguish each device in the patent, but if you examined the devices on a chip you may have trouble telling which was which. I've posted and labeled a couple of images below to make the point.

Here's one of the transistors:

And here's an optical thyristor (acting as a laser/receiver)

It's really amazing that something so similar in structure could behave so differently. Of course the laser -even to the untrained eye - appears much more complicated and the fact that the company claimed it was the most technically difficult to achieve MS is believable.

Reading this patent reassured me that the remaining R&D is more a matter of time, rather than a matter of technical proficiency.

Reading this patent and listening to fairchij's recording also made me realize that there are good reasons why US investors and even those trained in electrical engineering and photonics haven't jumped aboard en masse. They have never seen anything like POET and they need to see it working. It is likely, as the company has claimed, that POET reached the point where that can 'show and prove' after MS6. As Taylor indicated in the G&M article they needed to wait until they had the metrics before shopping it around. Now we have it, and there has since been a shift in importance away from the achievement of the technical MS towards the work of the SSC, which frankly has not been given enough time to reap any benefits.

So although I'm as hungry as anyone for more information (and I can't explain why the MS are held up unless they are late), I think we can afford to give the SSC more time to achieve what we really need for a sustained rise in SP - which is a deal.