Application Of Photonics
Optical interconnect systems
As data rates inside digital electronic systems are increasing the bandwidth of traditional copper interconnects is increasingly limited by signal distortion power consumption crosstalk and pinout capacity. Optical interconnects are viable alternatives as they offer higher bandwidth lower cost and lower power dissipation compared to traditional copper interconnects.
To fully exploit the advantages of optical interconnects over their electrical counterparts at the interchip level it is necessary to introduce the optical access directly on the digital CMOS chip. This requires tight integration of optics with the digital CMOS chip. A consortium of 10 companies has built a system demonstrator in which twodimensional laser and detector arrays are integrated on the CMOS chip using flipchip technology. Data between chips is transported over a twodimensional optical fiber ferrule which interfaces to the packaged chips with optical access.
Also for future generation electronic circuits optical interconnect at the intrachip level is very promising. But to be acceptable to the microelectronics industry severe constraints are imposed on the design of the optical interconnect layer. All fabrication steps should be compatible with future generations of electronic circuits and the total additional cost incurred should remain affordable. This means that as many fabrication steps as possible should be waferscale processes. Therefore investigating in the feasibility of adding a photonic interconnect layer on top of silicon ICs is done. This interconnect layer is fabricated by a combination of wafer bonding and waferscale processing steps. It is planar and will be built from a highdensity passive optical wiring circuit integrated with InPbased sources and detectors using a wafer bonding approach. SOIwaveguides allowing for very highdensity wiring are being developed and fabricated using standard CMOSprocessing techniques. The IIIV epimaterial for the active photonic devices is
Telecommunication systems
In the area of optical communications work has been continued on tunable laser diodes and optical regenerators two components which are considered keys for future alloptical networks. In the past new types of widely tunable laser diodes has been successfully designed and characterized. This year attention has focused on the further optimization of those laser diodes and on their direct modulation behavior C11818 RP107
Optical performance monitoring using asynchronous signal histograms has proven to be very useful in numerous experimental setups. In research a signal independent asynchronous histogram construction method using only a 2R regenerator and an adjustable attenuator thereby avoiding complex sampling systems and highfrequency electronics is developed. A theoretical study was performed defining the minimal requirements to the 2R regenerator used and several case studies using experimental data were investigated. A simulation platform was developed making the extension to other regenerator configurations possible. It shows that if an appropriate regenerator is available signal monitoring of any optical data signal should be possible.
Sensor applications
Optical sensors are immune to electromagnetic interference and can be used in harsh environments. They also provide good sensitivity linearity and stability. Commercial applications include physical sensing e.g. strain and chemical or biological sensing. Currently most optical sensors are based on fiber optics or free space optics but INTEC’s research deals with integrating the sensor functions on photonic ICs.
A microfluidic flow cell is constructed so that biological samples can be flown over the sensor in a controlled manner. The first tests for the sensing of an avidinbiotin binding are accomplished. In collaboration with the Molecular Biology Group UGent VIB and the Polymer Research Group UGent a design for SOI multiarray sensors and their surface treatment is made.
PHOTONICS
Photonics is the science of generating controlling and detecting photons particularly in the visible and near infrared spectrum but also extending to the ultraviolet 0.2 0.35 m wavelength longwave infrared 8 12 m wavelength and farinfrared/THz portion of the spectrum e.g. 24 THz corresponding to 75150 m wavelength where today quantum cascade lasers are being actively developed. Photonics is an outgrowth of the first practical semiconductor light emitters invented in the early 1960s at General Electric MIT Lincoln Laboratory IBM and RCA and made practical by Zhores Alferov and Dmitri Z. Garbuzov and collaborators working at the Ioffe PhysicoTechnical Institute and almost simultaneously by Izuo Hayashi and Mort Panish working at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Photonics most typically operates at frequencies on the order of hundreds of terahertz.
Just as applications of electronics have expanded dramatically since the first transistor was invented in 1948 the unique applications of photonics continue to emerge. Those which are established as economically important applications for semiconductor photonic devices include optical data recording fiber optic telecommunications laser printing based on xerography displays and optical pumping of highpower lasers. The potential applications of photonics are virtually unlimited and include chemical synthesis medical diagnostics onchip data communication laser defense and fusion energy to name several interesting additional examples.
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About the writer: i finished my post graduation in physics and education working as a lecturer in physics
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