  Photonic integrated circuits based on Lithium Niobate have demonstrated the
vast capabilities afforded by material with a high Pockels coefficient,
allowing linear and high-speed modulators operating at CMOS voltage levels for
applications ranging from data-center communications and photonic accelerators
for AI. However despite major progress, the industrial adoption of this
technology is compounded by the high cost per wafer. Here we overcome this
challenge and demonstrate a photonic platform that satisfies the dichotomy of
allowing scalable manufacturing at low cost, while at the same time exhibiting
equal, and superior properties to those of Lithium Niobate. We demonstrate that
it is possible to manufacture low loss photonic integrated circuits using
Lithium Tantalate, a material that is already commercially adopted for acoustic
filters in 5G and 6G. We show that LiTaO3 posses equally attractive optical
properties and can be etched with high precision and negligible residues using
DUV lithography, diamond like carbon (DLC) as a hard mask and alkaline wet
etching. Using this approach we demonstrate microresonators with an intrinsic
cavity linewidth of 26.8 MHz, corresponding to a linear loss of 5.6 dB/m and
demonstrate a Mach Zehnder modulator with Vpi L = 4.2 V cm half-wave voltage
length product. In comparison to Lithium Niobate, the photonic integrated
circuits based on LiTaO3 exhibit a much lower birefringence, allowing
high-density circuits and broadband operation over all telecommunication bands
(O to L band), exhibit higher photorefractive damage threshold, and lower
microwave loss tangent. Moreover, we show that the platform supports generation
of soliton microcombs in X-Cut LiTaO3 racetrack microresonator with
electronically detectable repetition rate, i.e. 30.1 GHz.
