Objective
It is now generally recognized that current electrical solutions will not suffice to fulfil all requirements for communication on-chip and between chips, which is expected to continue to grow exponentially during the coming years. Therefore we have to look for alternatives. Optical interconnect is a possibility, which is currently heavily investigated, including in my own on-going research. However, the requirements in terms of power consumption are very stringent and the current solutions being proposed are still off by an order of magnitude. Therefore, the objective of this project is to propose, design, fabricate and characterise photonic devices with fundamental lower power consumption through exploiting a large overlap between optical field, active material and electrical drive signals. For this purpose, we will build a completely new photonics integration platform consisting of self-assembled semiconductor materials as the active core element, embedded within strongly confined photonic cavities defined using the most advanced semiconductor fabrication technologies. Thereby we are combining rapidly maturing bottom-up techniques such as colloidal nanocrystal synthesis and semiconductor nanowire growth with traditional top-down technologies for realizing completely new types of photonic devices with an order of magnitude improvement in device performance. To reach this objective I will build a multidisciplinary team with experts in photonic device design, wet chemical synthesis, solid state physics, epitaxial nanowire growth and microelectronic fabrication technologies.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
ERC-2010-StG_20091028
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
ERC-SG - ERC Starting GrantHost institution
9000 Gent
Belgium