The thermal challenge in electronics and photonics grows with ever-increasing levels of integration, as the designer struggles to build more functionality into shrinking package space. Packing so much functionality into smaller package footprints will lead to substantially increased thermal densities which in turn will require deployment of new thermal solutions.
TIPS is meeting this challenge by taking optoelectronic system thermal management beyond the state-of-the-art by developing technologies that will allow system designers to develop highly integrated 3D optoelectronic systems based on silicon.
Socio-economic impact:
Integrating photonic and electronic circuits in a single chip is a big challenge and it will reduce the cost, space and power consumption. The thermal issues have been addressed in the realm of TIPS, which will lead to a major technological development in handling internet data traffic expected to increase sharply (40-80x by 2020).
The greatly enhanced thermal performance of μTEC and μFluidic cooling will underpin higher density, lower cost PIC devices. The expected result of this work is a significant reduction in the electrical power consumed by a PIC package in performing its function, lowering environmental impact or increasing performance per unit cost. When demonstrated, this integration technology can be applied not only for photonic circuits, but also for the whole electronic industry, where the local thermal management is needed.
Wider Societal implication:
Higher performance, energy-efficient PICs will enable widespread, cost-effective roll-out of higher speed communications infrastructure, with associated societal and economic benefits. Localized thermal management should result in lower power consumption, in higher device density on the circuits, and in further miniaturization of the photonic and electronic devices. A significant reduction in power consumption in a widely used photonic device will lead to a reduction in the running costs for data/telecom systems. Reduced power consumption lowers the environmental impact of these systems or allows more performance for a given cost. Enhanced broadband speed and quality will eventually lead to several new services such as e-health (real-time doctor-to-patient communication), e-learning (remote access to live lectures and self-paced tuition) and far better online delivery of products thereby significant cost saving and customer satisfaction.
